ALTIX SYSTEM SETS NEW PERFORMANCE RECORD.Silicon Graphics (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :SGI (SGI, Sunnyvale, CA, www.sgi.com) A manufacturer of workstations and servers, founded in 1982 by Jim Clark. The company was founded as Silicon Graphics, Inc., but changed to its acronym in 1999. ), Mountain View, Calif., has announced that its SGI(R) Altix(R) server has once again proven dominant against key competitors including Hewlett Packard. In recent database benchmark tests, a mid-range Altix system set a new performance record for stand-alone, eight- processor servers. The results show that a mid-range Altix system offers leading performance for users who depend on complex databases for their technical, scientific and creative applications. The Altix system's record-breaking TPC (Transaction Processing Performance Council, San Francisco, CA, www.tpc.org) An organization devoted to benchmarking transaction processing systems. In order to derive the number of transactions that can be processed in a given time frame, TPC benchmarks measure the total performance of Benchmark(TM) H (TPC-H TPC-H Transaction Processing Council Ad-hoc/decision support benchmark (computer performance) ) 300GB benchmark result was achieved on an eight-processor SGI Altix server. With this new record, Altix surpasses non-clustered results posted by other leading vendors including those for an eight-processor Hewlett Packard(R) server and a 16-processor Unisys(R) server -- as well as the recent posting for an eight-processor, dual-node Dell(R) cluster running Oracle(R) Database 10g. The industry standard Transaction Processing Updating the appropriate database records as soon as a transaction (order, payment, etc.) is entered into the computer. It may also imply that confirmations are sent at the same time. Transaction processing systems are the backbone of an organization because they update constantly. Performance Council's TPC-H benchmark is an important measure of database performance for high-performance computing High-speed computing, which typically refers to supercomputers used in scientific research. (HPC (Handheld PC) A palmtop computer that weighs less than one pound and runs specialized versions of popular applications. Microsoft coined the term for its Windows CE operating system, which is an abbreviated version of Windows. See Pocket PC. ) customers because it simulates the complex database tasks that lie at the core of many HPC customer workflows. The benchmark reflects decision support systems that examine large volumes of data, execute queries with a high degree of complexity, and give answers to critical business questions. The published result of 8827.5 QphH@300GB sets two records for the TPC-H 300GB scale factor benchmark. It is the highest non-clustered result, and the highest eight-processor result. The test configuration is based on Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors running IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) (R) DB2 Universal Database(TM) (UDB See DB2 UDB. udb - Universal Debugger ), and SUSE(R) Linux(R) Enterprise Server. Since its debut, SGI Altix has consistently shattered industry-standard benchmark records, regularly outpacing competing systems from HP, Sun and others. For instance, SGI Altix continues to dominate the respected STREAM list of the 20 fastest systems in terms of memory bandwidth Memory bandwidth is the rate at which data can be read from or stored into a semiconductor memory by a processor. Memory bandwidth is usually expressed in units of bytes/second, though this can vary for systems with natural data sizes that are not a multiple of the commonly used (http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/top20/Bandwidth.html ). STREAM is designed to work with extremely large data sets, thus replicating the computing conditions created by large, vector-style applications. The Altix system's latest performance victory demonstrates the advantage Altix brings to mission critical applications in areas such as homeland security Noun 1. Homeland Security - the federal department that administers all matters relating to homeland security Department of Homeland Security executive department - a federal department in the executive branch of the government of the United States , bioinformatics and energy exploration. The open, standards-based Altix line is designed specifically to meet the demanding requirements of high performance computing (HPC) environments. Availability Scalable SGI Altix systems are available in server configurations of 4 to 512 processors per node, and extended into cluster configurations using industry standard interconnects. For customers demanding even larger Altix systems, SGI plans to support configurations of 2048 per node and more processors over time. Additional Altix system technical and availability information is posted on http://www.sgi.com/servers/altix. About the TPC-H Benchmark The TPC Benchmark H (TPC-H) is a decision support benchmark. It consists of a suite of business oriented ad-hoc queries and concurrent data modifications. The queries and the data populating the database have been chosen to have broad industry-wide relevance. This benchmark illustrates decision support systems that examine large volumes of data, execute queries with a high degree of complexity, and give answers to critical business questions. The performance metric reported by TPC-H is called the TPC-H Composite Query-per-Hour Performance Metric (QphH@Size), and reflects multiple aspects of the capability of the system to process queries. These aspects include the selected database size against which the queries are executed, the query processing power when queries are submitted by a single stream, and the query throughput In Computer Science, Query Throughput (QthD) is a measurement used to determine the performance of a database system. The throughput metric is a classical throughput measure characterizing the ability of the system to support a multi-user workload in a balanced way. when queries are submitted by multiple concurrent users. The TPC-H Price/Performance metric is expressed as $/QphH@Size. The TPC is located on the Web at http://www.tpc.org. Silicon Graphics SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc., is a leader in high-performance computing, visualization and storage. SGI's vision is to provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the 21st century. Whether it's sharing images to aid in brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate, providing technologies for homeland security and defense or enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting Digital broadcasting is the practice of using digital data rather than analogue waveforms to carry broadcasts over television channels or assigned radio frequency bands. It is becoming increasingly popular for television usage (especially satellite television) but is having a , SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for scientific, engineering and creative users. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. Comparisons are based on the best performing and similarly configured 8-cpu servers currently shipping by HP and Dell, and a 16-cpu system from Unisys. For testing dates and sources of results on competitive systems, and for the latest TPC-H benchmark results, visit http://www.tcp.org. For more information, call 650/933-4519 or visit http://www.sgi.com. |
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