Remember how 16GBs used to be an enterprise level database mainframe?

Well, GPUs also have stupid amounts of compute on them. I have to imagine that there is some kind of database format that's useful with GPU compute attached.

Since the data is already in VRAM, the GPU can sort, join, or otherwise manipulate data as needed.

GPU-accelerated databases have a long history. I founded HeavyAI (previously MapD/OmniSci) in 2013, but there are or have been many other startups in this space, such as Voltron Data, Kinetica, Sqream, etc. And now you have major players like IBM, Starburst, and Microsoft (which just announced Fabric SQL on GPU today) working on their own GPU-accelerated systems. GPUs have a huge advantage in terms of compute, memory, and interconnect bandwidth over CPU, as long as you can keep them fed with data.

I believe within 2-3 years databases and data warehouses on GPU will be common. The widespread use of agents to query data will be a part of this, as there will be a need to run far more queries at lower latency than needed for the ETL and BI workloads of the past.

Can we somehow make them work with 1 TB PCIes so we can churn through way more data?

oh god please don't create more demand for GPUs

Possibly LSM compaction.