Sybase announced their implementation of MPP in Sybase IQ, PlexQ(TM) Distributed Query Platform, as part of the recent Sybase IQ 15.3 Beta release. They’re talking about Redefining MPP, and ‘MPP done right’. They will use several or all nodes to process a query, but still rely on shared storage. Sounds as if they’re directly pitching against the classic shared nothing MPP mantra of ‘balanced CPU and IO’ with the following:
Using an MPP shared-everything architecture, Sybase IQ 15.3 PlexQ Distributed Query Platform surpasses typical shared-nothing MPP architectures with better concurrency, self service ad-hoc queries, and independent scale out of compute and storage resources.
Only time (and real life benchmarks or implementations) will tell whether they got it right, and IQ is able to deliver adequate performance on SAN storage at a competitive price.