Patent ID: 8090704

Claim:
A computer apparatus for searching an in-memory database comprising: a plurality of compute nodes each having a processor and computer memory operatively coupled to the processor, the computer memory having disposed within the computer memory a portion of the in-memory database, wherein the plurality of compute nodes further comprise a global combining network adapter (GCNA) for performing collective operations over a global combining network that connects the plurality of compute nodes in a binary tree where the plurality of compute nodes have a parent node and child nodes, wherein each of the plurality of compute nodes is assigned a unique rank which uniquely identifies the node's location in the binary tree network for use in both point to point and collective operations in the binary tree network, wherein the collective operations are variations or combinations of four operations comprising broadcast operation, gather operation, scatter operation and reduce operation, wherein the GCNA comprises an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) that operates on data in registers in the GCNA and stores the results in a results buffer; a search mechanism in the computer memory that receives a non-unique search key and searches the portion of the in-memory database using the search key and places a local result in a contribution buffer; and wherein the search mechanism contributes to a search of the in-memory database for the non-unique search key through a collective operation on the buffers of the global combining network by combining data received from a child node with the contents of the contribution buffer and passing over the GCNA a combined result to the parent node.