ActiveSort: Efficient external sorting using active SSDs in the MapReduce framework

In this work, we propose ActiveSort, a novel mechanism to improve the external sorting algorithm using the concept of active SSDs. External sorting is used extensively in the data-intensive computing frameworks such as Hadoop. By performing merge operations on-the-fly within the SSD, ActiveSort reduces the amount of I/O transfer and improves the performance of external sorting in Hadoop. Our evaluation results on a real SSD platform indicate that the Hadoop applications using ActiveSort outperform the original Hadoop by up to 36.1%. ActiveSort reduces the amount of write by up to 40.4%, thereby improving the lifetime of the SSD.