"this is to enable programs to have more a more direct and faster interface to data, while retaining data consistency and safety that typically would be managed by the OS?"
No, managed by the database engine. The idea is to put the data-intensive operations of a database engine into a highly parallel SPU. The application would see an interface much like an SQL or NoSQL database.
Maybe that's a dumb question but why should this chip be highly parallel? In the case of GPU computations are by their nature embarrassingly parallel but I don't see why this should be the case for SPU. Why not just add a few more CPU cores and let this specialized controller handle the problem of concurrent accesses?
But see, you're limiting your idea to databases. I don't think you should do that. The idea of a "storage accelerator" (by whatever name) could be used far more widely than that.
No, managed by the database engine. The idea is to put the data-intensive operations of a database engine into a highly parallel SPU. The application would see an interface much like an SQL or NoSQL database.