Compaq First to Ship Powerful 8-way Servers; ProLiant 8000 and 8500 Demonstrate Benefits of Standards-Based Computing Driving Quick Customer Acceptance.HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 23, 1999-- Following last week's announcement to drive standards-based computing further into the data center and to expand into new markets, Compaq Computer Corporation (company) Compaq Computer Corporation - The largest US manufacturer and vendor of IBM PC compatible personal computers and servers. Compaq was started in 1982 by three ex-Texas Instruments employees. Quarterly sales $2499M, profits $210M (Aug 1994). http://compaq.com/. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :CPQ CPQ Compaq CPQ Conseil du Patronat du Québec (Canada) CPQ Configure-Price-Quote CPQ Conseil de Presse du Québec (Québec Press Council, Canada) CPQ Companion Parrot Quarterly ) today announced it is the first vendor to ship 8-way servers based on the Profusion(TM) architecture, with its ProLiant 8000 and ProLiant 8500 servers. Fueled by strong customer demand, Compaq will also be the first vendor shipping 8-way servers in volume, meeting needs across a broad set of applications and industries, including Finance, Energy, Healthcare and the emerging Application Service Provider market. Among the first ProLiant 8-way customers are The Northern Trust, Enron, Sharp HealthCare Sharp HealthCare is a not-for-profit integrated regional health care delivery system located in San Diego. Sharp includes four acute care hospitals, three specialty hospitals, three affiliated medical groups and a health plan. , and Digex. Bobby Patrick, Vice President of Strategy and Product Development, DIGEX (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on :DIGX) said, "The deployment of ProLiant 8-way servers in our IT infrastructure means we are always open for business. We are able to provide our customers with the applications they need to realize the benefits of e-commerce. With the deployment of Compaq 8-way servers we get significant cost savings. In fact, we are going to be purchasing more units." Pricing and Investment Protection The ProLiant 8000 and ProLiant 8500 have the performance to meet large enterprises most demanding needs and with prices starting below $14,000, companies can purchase these highly scalable servers which easily grow with their business. The ProLiant 8000 with two Pentium III The successor to the Pentium II from Intel. Introduced in the spring of 1999 at 500 MHz, the Pentium III architecture was similar to the Pentium II with the addition of 70 new instructions optimized for multimedia (see SSE). Xeon 550 MHz (MegaHertZ) One million cycles per second. It is used to measure the transmission speed of electronic devices, including channels, buses and the computer's internal clock. A one-megahertz clock (1 MHz) means some number of bits (16, 32, 64, etc. processors, 512 KB of Level 2 Cache See L2 cache. level 2 cache - secondary cache and 256 MB RAM starts at $22,500. The ProLiant 8500 with one Pentium III Xeon 550 MHz processor, 512 KB of Level 2 Cache and 256 MB RAM starts at $13,950. Fulfilling Compaq's commitment to deliver 8-way upgradability to current 4-way ProLiant 7000 customers, Compaq also announced the pending availability of new 8-way upgrade kits. The anticipated starting price starting price n (COMM) → precio inicial starting price n → prix initial starting price start n (at auction for the 8-way upgrade is $9,090. All pricing is based on U.S. estimated street prices. Reseller prices may vary. The ProLiant 8000 and ProLiant 8500 will enable upgrades to future technologies to continue to offer customers superior investment protection. Prices for the 8-way ProLiant servers range from $20,000 to $80,000 for configured systems. High Availability Also called "RAS" (reliability, availability, serviceability) or "fault resilient," it refers to a multiprocessing system that can quickly recover from a failure. There may be a minute or two of downtime while one system switches over to another, but processing will continue. Features Combined with Business Critical Services The ProLiant 8000 and ProLiant 8500 have the high availability features to meet 24x7 application needs. As part of its comprehensive 8-way ProLiant solution, Compaq provides extensive experience in delivering Business-Critical Services to customers. Specifically, Compaq offers easy to purchase CarePaq service modules that range from 24x7 uptime and 4-hour response time guarantees (1), to business critical expertise for planning, deploying, maintaining and managing the most demanding e-commerce environments. "For a financial services The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. company like Northern Trust, the deployment of 8-way servers provide us not only greater performance but also significant cost savings," said Jerry Helton, Vice-President Distributive Systems, The Northern Trust Company. "As well, the 8-way server architecture provides us with greater ease of maintenance and upgrading." Compaq Innovation Co-developed by Compaq and Intel, the 8-way Profusion(TM) Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing) A multiprocessing architecture in which multiple CPUs, residing in one cabinet, share the same memory. SMP systems provide scalability. As business increases, additional CPUs can be added to absorb the increased transaction volume. ) architecture provides near linear scalability for 8-processor servers running Microsoft Windows See Windows. (operating system) Microsoft Windows - Microsoft's proprietary window system and user interface software released in 1985 to run on top of MS-DOS. Widely criticised for being too slow (hence "Windoze", "Microsloth Windows") on the machines available then. NT 4.0 and Windows 2000, Novell NetWare, SCO UnixWare, and Linux. This scalability, together with the exceptional performance of the memory and I/O (Input/Output) The transfer of data between the CPU and a peripheral device. Every transfer is an output from one device and an input to another. See PC input/output. I/O - Input/Output subsystems, enables systems to maximize the productivity of the most demanding enterprise applications such as e-commerce, data warehousing, web serving, terminal serving and electronic mail. "With the release of the ProLiant 8500 8-way server from Compaq, Enron will be able to better leverage the NT platform for mission critical operations," said John P. Tollefsen, Senior Director of Infrastructure and Integration, Enron Corporation. "We are excited about the possibilities for the 8500 and feel it will enable us to stay on the leading edge of technology innovation." Smart Array Storage Solutions Today Compaq is also announcing a new Smart Array 4250ES Controller, designed specifically for the new high-performance 8-way ProLiant 8000 server. The controller is based on Compaq's innovative 64-bit performance architecture and Compaq's unique hot-pluggable, cable-free design. For higher availability, customers can add a second controller for fail-over redundancy. The controller is compatible with all Smart Array controllers for simpler, more cost-effective upgrades. The Smart Array family of products offers unparalleled data and software compatibility for today's demanding market. Powerful Benchmark Results The ProLiant 8000 posted 40,013 transactions per minute (tpmC) at just $18.86/tpmC running Microsoft SQL Server A relational DBMS from Microsoft that is a major component of the Windows Server System. It is Microsoft's high-end client/server database and is closely integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio and the Microsoft Office System. 7.0 on Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition. This TPC-C A benchmark that measures overall transaction processing performance. See TPC. benchmark represents a 78 percent increase in performance over the highest number ever achieved on an Intel-based 4-way server. For additional information on benchmark results, visit http://www.compaq.com/products/servers/benchmarks/index.html For more information on Compaq ProLiant 8000 and 8500, visit Compaq's web site at http://www1.compaq.com/newsroom. Company Background Compaq Computer Corporation, a Fortune Global 100 company, is the second largest computer company in the world and the largest global supplier of computer systems. Compaq develops and markets hardware, software, solutions, and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, enterprise and network storage solutions, commercial desktop and portable products and consumer PCs. The company is an industry leader in environmentally friendly programs and business practices. Compaq products are sold and supported in more than 100 countries through a network of authorized Compaq marketing partners. Customer support and information about Compaq and its products are available at http://www.compaq.com. Compaq, Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. (1) For more information and details, go to http://www.compaq.com/services/carepaq/index.html |
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