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Multi-Core, Main-Memory Joins: Sort vs. Hash Revisited

Summary: Extensive multi-core/NUMA experiments overturn claims that SIMD and NUMA favor sort-merge: optimized radix-hash join remains clearly faster, except at very large scale. Provides state-of-the-art implementations and hardware insights for parallel operators. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID
h8b5d1916826b4eb5
Venue
VLDB
Year
2014
Pagerank
0.00023080446
Overall Rank
250 | 98.33%
DOI
10.14778/2732232.2732236

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

BibTeX Citation

@article{balkesen_vldb14,
        title = {{Multi-Core, Main-Memory Joins: Sort vs. Hash Revisited}},
        author = {Balkesen, Cagri and Alonso, Gustavo and Teubner, Jens and Özsu, M. Tamer},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '14},
        volume = {7},
        number = {1},
        pages = {85--96},
        doi = {10.14778/2732232.2732236},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/2732232.2732236},
        year = {2014}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 32 of 82 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
7,492 Fast Multi-Column Sorting in Main-Memory Column-Stores 2016 SIGMOD 5.4981253e-05
7,803 RAPID: In-Memory Analytical Query Processing Engine with Extreme Performance per Watt 2018 SIGMOD 5.4329661e-05
7,822 Analyzing Vectorized Hash Tables Across CPU Architectures 2023 VLDB 5.4304761e-05
7,887 Building Advanced SQL Analytics From Low-Level Plan Operators 2021 SIGMOD 5.4162508e-05
7,942 NOCAP: Near-Optimal Correlation-Aware Partitioning Joins 2023 SIGMOD 5.4055234e-05
7,977 Main Memory Adaptive Denormalization 2016 SIGMOD 5.3980258e-05
7,985 Parallelizing Intra-Window Join on Multicores: An Experimental Study 2021 SIGMOD 5.3960833e-05
8,264 Pea Hash: A Performant Extendible Adaptive Hashing Index 2023 SIGMOD 5.3501391e-05
8,419 The Case for Learned In-Memory Joins 2023 VLDB 5.3198816e-05
8,517 SPRINTER: A Fast n-ary Join Query Processing Method for Complex OLAP Queries 2020 SIGMOD 5.3110227e-05
8,654 Inferray: fast in-memory RDF inference 2016 VLDB 5.2795152e-05
8,701 Adaptive Code Generation for Data-Intensive Analytics 2021 VLDB 5.2714222e-05
8,822 GPH: An Efficient and Effective Perfect Hashing Scheme for GPU Architectures 2025 SIGMOD 5.2549263e-05
9,034 Entropy-Learned Hashing: Constant Time Hashing with Controllable Uniformity 2022 SIGMOD 5.219451e-05
9,093 A Design Space Exploration and Evaluation for Main-Memory Hash Joins in Storage Class Memory 2023 VLDB 5.208561e-05
9,142 An Application-Specific Instruction Set for Accelerating Set-Oriented Database Primitives 2014 SIGMOD 5.2074873e-05
9,145 Efficiently Joining Large Relations on Multi-GPU Systems 2025 VLDB 5.2067758e-05
9,497 How to Stop Under-Utilization and Love Multicores 2014 SIGMOD 5.1539576e-05
9,587 Engineering High-Performance Database Engines 2014 VLDB 5.1391768e-05
10,212 Thriving in the No Man’s Land between Compilers and Databases 2019 CIDR 5.0490854e-05
10,673 TQEx: Tensor-based Query Engine Enhanced by Bridging the Gap 2026 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
10,738 P-MOSS: Scheduling Main-Memory Indexes Over NUMA Servers Using Next Token Prediction 2026 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
11,016 Why We Created Yet Another Memory Framework: Understanding MGA’s Role in Next-Gen Database Systems 2026 VLDB 4.9605343e-05
11,259 Nested Parquet Is Flat, Why Not Use It? How To Scan Nested Data With On-the-Fly Key Generation and Joins 2025 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
11,591 Enabling Adaptive Sampling for Intra-Window Join: Simultaneously Optimizing Quantity and Quality 2024 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
11,600 SPID-Join: A Skew-resistant Processing-in-DIMM Join Algorithm Exploiting the Bank- and Rank-level Parallelisms of DIMMs 2024 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
11,718 Cache-Efficient Top-k Aggregation over High Cardinality Large Datasets 2024 VLDB 4.9605343e-05
11,800 Cracking-Like Join for Trusted Execution Environments 2023 VLDB 4.9605343e-05
11,915 Scaling Equi-Joins 2022 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
12,377 A Study of Sorting Algorithms on Approximate Memory 2016 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
12,388 Efficient Query Processing on Many-core Architectures: A Case Study with Intel Xeon Phi Processor 2016 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
12,510 Palette: Enabling Scalable Analytics for Big-Memory, Multicore Machines 2014 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 13 of 13 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank Cited Paper Year Venue Pagerank
55 GAMMA - A High Performance Dataflow Database Machine 1986 VLDB 0.00040385073
77 Cache Conscious Algorithms for Relational Query Processing 1994 VLDB 0.00036821827
83 Hashing Methods and Relational Algebra Operations 1984 VLDB 0.00035942723
212 Sort vs. Hash Revisited: Fast Join Implementation on Modern Multi-Core CPUs 2009 VLDB 0.00024786576
249 A Performance Evaluation of Four Parallel Join Algorithms in a Shared-Nothing Multiprocessor Environment 1989 SIGMOD 0.00023099455
360 Design and Evaluation of Main Memory Hash Join Algorithms for Multi-core CPUs 2011 SIGMOD 0.00019959166
423 Massively Parallel Sort-Merge Joins in Main Memory Multi-Core Database Systems 2012 VLDB 0.00018450254
659 An Overview of The System Software of A Parallel Relational Database Machine GRACE 1986 VLDB 0.00015027863
662 Fast Sort on CPUs and GPUs: A Case for Bandwidth Oblivious SIMD Sort 2010 SIGMOD 0.00014972958
722 Efficient Implementation of Sorting on Multi-Core SIMD CPU Architecture 2008 VLDB 0.00014470465
1,205 NUMA-aware algorithms: the case of data shuffling 2013 CIDR 0.00011512846
2,173 CellSort: High Performance Sorting on the Cell Processor 2007 VLDB 8.9089575e-05
3,403 CloudRAMSort: Fast and Efficient Large-Scale Distributed RAM Sort on Shared-Nothing Cluster 2012 SIGMOD 7.3213995e-05
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Semantically Similar Papers

# Overall Rank Paper Year Venue
1 9,093 A Design Space Exploration and Evaluation for Main-Memory Hash Joins in Storage Class Memory 2023 VLDB
2 156 Multiprocessor Hash-Based Join Algorithms 1985 VLDB
3 1,269 An Experimental Comparison of Thirteen Relational Equi-Joins in Main Memory 2016 SIGMOD
4 2,515 Hash-Based Join Algorithms for Multiprocessor Computers with Shared Memory 1990 VLDB
5 249 A Performance Evaluation of Four Parallel Join Algorithms in a Shared-Nothing Multiprocessor Environment 1989 SIGMOD
6 2,806 Distributed Join Algorithms on Thousands of Cores 2017 VLDB
7 3,072 Design and Evaluation of Parallel Pipelined Join Algorithms 1987 SIGMOD
8 423 Massively Parallel Sort-Merge Joins in Main Memory Multi-Core Database Systems 2012 VLDB
9 360 Design and Evaluation of Main Memory Hash Join Algorithms for Multi-core CPUs 2011 SIGMOD
10 212 Sort vs. Hash Revisited: Fast Join Implementation on Modern Multi-Core CPUs 2009 VLDB