CPU being hit hard by a query

I have a query that runs on three servers, three different instances. On my Sun E4500 (4 processor), the query takes about two minutes. On a Sun 280R (single processor), it takes about 2 minutes. On a Sun E250 (single processor), it basically doesn't end. I've let it go as long as 1 1/2 hours before canceling it. (I realize the E250 is much less box than the others.)

The instances are configured pretty much the same. But I've noticed that when the query runs on the E250, vmstat shows user CPU utilization hovering around 95%. This doesn't happen on the other boxes - the 280R has a brief spike at around 40% utilization, the 4500 doesn't even notice the query. Is there something I can do, from an Oracle tuning perspective, to lessen the impact on CPU resources on the E250? This seems to be the bottleneck that's keeping this from running.

Thanks,
Harry Boswell Received on Fri Aug 20 2004 - 11:49:15 CDT