Teradata has introduced a new database technology called Teradata Intelligent Memory, which the company says “creates the industry’s first extended memory space beyond cache that significantly increases query performance and enables organizations to leverage in-memory technologies with big, diverse data.”

In other words, Teradata says, it’s the first in-memory technology that supports big data deployments.

The product is part of the “Unified Data Architecture” strategy, which leverages Teradata, Teradata Aster, and open source Apache Hadoop. As the company notes, data in Apache Hadoop that is frequently used can be accessed through Teradata SQL-H, and based on temperature of the data, moved to Intelligent Memory to take advantage of its computing capability.

“The introduction of Teradata Intelligent Memory allows our customers to exploit the performance of memory within Teradata Platforms in a new way, and extends our leadership position as the best performing data warehouse technology at the most competitive price,” said Scott Gnau , president, Teradata Labs. “Teradata Intelligent Memory technology is built into the data warehouse and customers don’t have to buy a separate appliance. Additionally, Teradata enables its customers to configure the exact amount of in-memory capability needed for critical workloads. It can be difficult, expensive, and impractical to keep all data in memory, and Teradata’s unique approach means the right amount of memory can be applied to the right set of data for blinding performance – automatically.”

“Teradata’s new in-memory architecture is integrated with its management of data temperature,” said Richard Winter , chief executive officer, WinterCorp. “This is very significant, because the hottest data will migrate automatically to the in-memory layer – Teradata Intelligent Memory; the next hottest data will move automatically to solid state disk; and, so on. Teradata also provides the column storage and data compression that amplify the value of data in memory. The customer sees increased performance without having to make decisions about which data is placed in memory.”

Teradata Intelligent Memory is available to current Teradata workload-specific platforms running the Teradata database. It’s available as part of Teradata Database 14.10, which will be released in the second quarter.