Querying Using All Cores

[Chris Hughes]

I have created a very large table with around 150 million rows. Executing the following query takes 25 seconds and uses 12.5% CPU:

SELECT first_of_month, COUNT(*)
FROM table_1
WHERE first_of_month BETWEEN '2014-01-01' AND '2015-03-01'
GROUP BY first_of_month;

I would like to use more CPU and have the query run faster. So using something I found through Google I created this shell script:

#!/bin/bash

now=`date +"%Y-%m-%d" -d "01/01/2014"`
end=`date +"%Y-%m-%d" -d "03/01/2015"`

while [ "$now" != "$end" ] ;

do
sql="SELECT first_of_month, COUNT(*) FROM table_1 WHERE first_of_month = '$now'"
mysql -vvv -uuser -e "$sql" &
now=`date +"%Y-%m-%d" -d "$now + 1 month"`;
done

It takes just 5 seconds and uses over 70% CPU.

My question is, can I perform the same (ie. use more cores simultaneously to speed up query execution) in a stored procedure? Or maybe installing some kind of add-on?

I would prefer not to write shell scripts.

Many thanks

Chrisp