OK in talking with Karen Morton and Jonathan Lewis it looked like a bug with the trace mechanism might be the root of the problem with the stat lines for a sort and not some new fancy way Oracle is doing the sorts. And I think that is true. Here is a look at getting the stats directly from v$sql_plan_statistics_all for my test SQL:
Select * from emp, dept where emp.deptno = dept.deptno
/
Now all the times look very nice. So I'm going with the BUG theory for now. (EDIT1 - Sorry I thought I had a way to keep the spacing but NO!) (EDIT 2 - Well let's try this little screen shot, a little small, but the numbers are easier to read.)
