title: Presto vs Impala: architecture, performance, functionality
body: <p><em>Could you highligh major differences between the two in architecture &amp; functionality in 2019? And how that differences affect performance?</em></p>
  
  <p>For some reason <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19841027/what-are-the-fundamental-architectural-sql-compliance-and-data-use-scenario-di">this excellent question</a> was tagged as opinion-based.</p>
  
  <p>Extra-question: <em>why Amazon decide to go with Presto as engine for Athena? Is it anyway better than Impala?</em></p>
  
  <h2>UPD</h2>
  
  <p>f PrestoDB and Impala are same why they so differ in hardware requirements? <a href="https://teradata.github.io/presto/docs/141t/system-requirements/hardware-requirements.html" rel="noreferrer">Presto asks 16 GB+ of RAM</a> while <a href="https://impala.apache.org/docs/build/html/topics/impala_prereqs.html" rel="noreferrer">Impala asks for 128 GB+ of RAM</a>.</p>