Tensors: An abstraction for general data processing

Summary: Tensor Computation Runtimes (TCRs) extend DL tensor abstractions to data processing, enabling graph and relational workloads. Mapping these problems to tensor form via Hummingbird yields competitive performance with less development effort and portability. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: hebee633c7927bed7
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2021
Pagerank: 6.8994712e-05
Overall Rank: 3,955 | 73.42%
DOI: 10.14778/3467861.3467869
PDF: Download (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Dimitrios Koutsoukos (ETH Zurich)
2. Supun Nakandala (University of California San Diego)
3. Konstantinos Karanasos (Microsoft)
4. Karla Saur (Microsoft)
5. Gustavo Alonso (ETH Zurich)
6. Matteo Interlandi (Microsoft)

BibTeX Citation

@article{koutsoukos_vldb21,
        title = {{Tensors: An abstraction for general data processing}},
        author = {Koutsoukos, Dimitrios and Nakandala, Supun and Karanasos, Konstantinos and Saur, Karla and Alonso, Gustavo and Interlandi, Matteo},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '21},
        volume = {14},
        number = {10},
        pages = {1797--1804},
        doi = {10.14778/3467861.3467869},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3467861.3467869},
        year = {2021}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 20 of 20 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
2,460	Query Processing on Tensor Computation Runtimes	2022	VLDB	8.4308406e-05
2,661	End-to-end Optimization of Machine Learning Prediction Queries	2022	SIGMOD	8.1568473e-05
5,778	The Tensor Data Platform: Towards an AI-centric Database System	2023	CIDR	5.9953658e-05
5,991	Terabyte-Scale Analytics in the Blink of an Eye	2026	VLDB	5.9219616e-05
6,747	Mitigating the Impedance Mismatch between Prediction Query Execution and Database Engine	2025	SIGMOD	5.6883491e-05
6,844	Serving Deep Learning Models with Deduplication from Relational Databases	2022	VLDB	5.6647722e-05
6,883	DAPHNE: An Open and Extensible System Infrastructure for Integrated Data Analysis Pipelines	2022	CIDR	5.6552024e-05
7,873	WindTunnel: Towards Differentiable ML Pipelines Beyond a Single Model	2022	VLDB	5.4339503e-05
8,095	Array DBMS: Past, Present, and (Near) Future	2021	VLDB	5.3917406e-05
8,405	TOD: GPU-accelerated Outlier Detection via Tensor Operations	2023	VLDB	5.3370629e-05
8,690	Galley: Modern Query Optimization for Sparse Tensor Programs	2025	SIGMOD	5.2880532e-05
9,040	TGraph: A Tensor-centric Graph Processing Framework	2025	SIGMOD	5.2313661e-05
10,025	Share the Tensor Tea: How Databases can Leverage the Machine Learning Ecosystem	2022	VLDB	5.091949e-05
10,047	MEMO: Fine-grained Tensor Management For Ultra-long Context LLM Training	2025	SIGMOD	5.0896901e-05
10,147	Does A Fish Need a Bicycle? The Case for On-Chip NPUs in DBMS	2026	CIDR	5.0691578e-05
10,258	TenGraph: A Tensor-Based Graph Query Engine	2024	VLDB	5.0489964e-05
10,357	Data Movement-Aware GPU Sharing for Data-Intensive Systems	2026	CIDR	4.9769913e-05
10,457	Eliminating Redundant Feature Tests in Decision Tree and Random Forest Inference on SQL Predicates	2026	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
10,625	Accelerating Triangle-Connected Truss Community Search Across Heterogeneous Hardware	2026	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
10,733	Scalable GPU Acceleration of Scalar Functions in Analytical Databases: Compilation, Benchmarking, and Optimization	2026	VLDB	4.9769913e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 12 of 12 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
14	MonetDB/X100: Hyper-Pipelining Query Execution	2005	CIDR	0.00064013679
21	Efficiently Compiling Efficient Query Plans for Modern Hardware	2011	VLDB	0.00056835296
23	Spark SQL: Relational Data Processing in Spark	2015	SIGMOD	0.00055384955
251	Multi-Core, Main-Memory Joins: Sort vs. Hash Revisited	2014	VLDB	0.00023136934
605	Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Compiled and Vectorized Queries But Were Afraid to Ask	2018	VLDB	0.00015640305
857	Hardware-Oblivious Parallelism for In-Memory Column-Stores	2013	VLDB	0.00013422539
1,269	A Study of the Fundamental Performance Characteristics of GPUs and CPUs for Database Analytics	2020	SIGMOD	0.00011254742
1,473	Voodoo - A Vector Algebra for Portable Database Performance on Modern Hardware	2016	VLDB	0.00010552993
2,184	Extending Relational Query Processing with ML Inference	2020	CIDR	8.8953085e-05
2,636	Big Data Analytics with Datalog Queries on Spark	2016	SIGMOD	8.1926426e-05
2,802	Distributed Join Algorithms on Thousands of Cores	2017	VLDB	7.9866934e-05
4,975	SPORES: Sum-Product Optimization via Relational Equality Saturation for Large Scale Linear Algebra	2020	VLDB	6.3289021e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	2,401	Declarative Recursive Computation on an RDBMS or, Why You Should Use a Database For Distributed Machine Learning	2019	VLDB
2	5,444	Optimizing Tensor Programs on Flexible Storage	2023	SIGMOD
3	10,024	EinDecomp: Decomposition of Declaratively-Specified Machine Learning and Numerical Computations for Parallel Execution	2025	VLDB
4	10,258	TenGraph: A Tensor-Based Graph Query Engine	2024	VLDB
5	10,709	Automated Tensor-Relational Decomposition for Large-Scale Sparse Tensor Computation	2026	VLDB
6	5,778	The Tensor Data Platform: Towards an AI-centric Database System	2023	CIDR
7	10,025	Share the Tensor Tea: How Databases can Leverage the Machine Learning Ecosystem	2022	VLDB
8	9,040	TGraph: A Tensor-centric Graph Processing Framework	2025	SIGMOD
9	2,460	Query Processing on Tensor Computation Runtimes	2022	VLDB
10	5,292	Tensor Relational Algebra for Distributed Machine Learning System Design	2021	VLDB