Data processing on a continuously growing volume of data and the increasing power restrictions have become an ubiquitous challenge in our world today. Besides parallel computing, a promising approach to improve the energy efficiency of current systems is to integrate specialized hardware. This paper presents two application-specific architectures to accelerate basic database operators frequently used in modern database systems: an extended instruction set based on a given Cadence Tensilica processor (ASIP) and a comparable application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). The ASIP is implemented in a system-on-chip and manufactured in a 28 nm CMOS technology to realize measurements of performance and power consumption. Furthermore, the comparison with the ASIC blocks allows to quantify the results with the ASIP approach in terms of throughput, area, and energy efficiency as well as to discuss the capabilities and limitations when accelerating selected database operators.