Acidus wrote:

"Like that vendor's appliance, the Oracle Database Machine offloads SQL query processing and large-table scans to an intelligent storage layer," he wrote. "Whereas Netezza uses a technique that involves field-programmable gate arrays, Oracle has leveraged its 11g technology to parallelize query/scan execution to a massively parallel pool of Exadata storage cells."

Hmmm. this statement seems to imply that Netezza is somehow performing table scans or at least matching criteria using FGPAs inside of storage box. Teradata isn't doing any database operation on the storage box itself. pretty cool.

Netezza uses the FPGA in many ways. Disk controller, decompression engine, filter engine for data based on SQL where clause, projection engine (only columns required for this SQL statement leave the disk). The FPGA enables Netezza to move only data required to answer this SQL question from disk. Not moving Data is the primary method of speeding up databases. This is typically done using partitioning and indexes to get index only reads.

The Oracle HP solution seems to have dedicated smp processors to a set of disk pushing the Oracle dbms largely intact to a set of disk. This implies the bulk of the data movement Oracle has always done is still being done. However, more discovery has to happen before this theory is proven as fact.