Optimizing database architecture for machine architecture: is there still hope?

In the keynote, I will give some examples of how computer architecture has strongly evolved in the past decennia and how this influences the performance, and therefore the design, of algorithms and data structure for data management. One the one hand, these changes in hardware architecture have caused the (continuing) need for new data management research. i.e. hardware-conscious database research. Here, I will draw examples from hardware-conscious research performed on the CWI systems MonetDB and Vectorwise. This diversification trend in computer architectural characteristics of the various solutions in the market seems to be intensifying. This is seen in quite different architectural options, such as CPU vs GPU vs FPGA, but also even restricting oneself to just CPUs there seems to be increasing design variation in architecture and platform behavior. This poses a challenge to hardware-conscious database research.