Data General Ships Industry's First 32-Processor ccNUMA Server Based On Intel Architecture.WESTBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 3, 1997-- Joins 16-processor AViiON AV 20000 server already installed at Sainsbury's for multi-terabyte data warehousing See data warehouse. data warehousing - data warehouse application Data General today announced that it has shipped a 32-processor AViiON AV 20000 ccNUMA server to world leading retailer Sainsbury's, with headquarters in the United Kingdom. This represents the industry's first shipment of a 32-processor ccNUMA system based on the Intel architecture. The AV 20000 is Data General's second generation ccNUMA system. In initial offerings, the AV 20000 can support up to 32 200-MHz Pentium Pro The sixth generation of the Intel x86 family of CPU chips. The term may refer to the chip or to a PC that uses it. Introduced in 1995 as the successor to the Pentium, models from 150 MHz to 200 MHz were released. processors with optional 1 MB L2 cache (Level 2 cache) A memory bank built into the CPU chip, packaged within the same module or built on the motherboard. The L2 cache feeds the L1 cache, and its memory is slower than L1 memory. The L2 cache feeds the L1 cache, which feeds the processor. , 32 GB of memory, and 100 Terabytes of fault-tolerant CLARiiON fibre channel storage. In clustered configurations, the processor count grows to 128. Future systems will continue to leverage the Intel technology roadmap The context of product management The existence of product managers in the product software industry indicates that software is becoming more and more commercialized as a standard product. and the ccNUMA architecture which can scale to hundreds of processors. Sainsbury's is using their two AV 20000 servers for a data warehousing application based on the Oracle database. This multi-terabyte data warehouse stores information about Sainsbury's customers collected at the point of sale through their loyalty card program. "Sainsbury's is investing in technology that will allow the company get closer to its customers. Data General's AV 20000 ccNUMA server has proven to be a flexible platform, allowing that us to adapt and extend our data warehouse to three terabytes in the near future," said Martin Wright, IS Infrastructure Manager at Sainsbury's. "It has delivered the performance and scalability that we required." "We are extremely pleased with the success we've had with the AV 20000. Now, being the first to ship a 32-processor Intel-based ccNUMA system clearly demonstrates Data General's leadership in using this architecture to build highly scalable servers. It is a considerable achievement for our engineering group," said Linda Mentzer, vice president of UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). marketing at Data General. "Data warehousing is one of our target markets for this system. Sainsbury's represents the kind of successful collaboration we anticipate with other customers." Scalable Performance Like the already installed 16-processor AV 20000 server, this 32-processor system passed a series of rigorous performance scalability acceptance tests developed by Sainsbury's. These tests showed scalability averaging 92%. The AV 20000 has demonstrated similar scaling in other benchmarks using actual customer applications, outperforming much larger MPP (Massively Parallel Processing or Massively Parallel Processor) A multiprocessing architecture that uses up to thousands of processors. Some might contend that a computer system with 64 or more CPUs is a massively parallel processor. systems. With this system, Sainsbury's will now be able to analyze information collected from its customer loyalty card program to develop merchandising programs to attract and retain more customers. Key to the success has been the effective alliance between Sainsbury's, SHL SHL Shift Logical Left SHL Schweizerische Hochschule für Landwirtschaft (German: Swiss College of Agriculture) SHL Southern Hockey League SHL Silver Haired Legislature SHL Single Hidden Layer (neural networks) System House, the UK arm of MCI (1) (Media Control Interface) A high-level programming interface from Microsoft and IBM for controlling multimedia devices. It provides commands and functions to open, play and close the device. (2) (Microwave Communications Inc. System House, and Data General. Using a CLARiiON disk farm with over one terabyte of data storage initially, Sainsbury's expects the system to grow quickly to three terabytes, making it one of the largest data warehouses in Europe. "The data warehouse system holds a lot of data, and enables us to retrieve and analyze it very quickly," notes Wright. "Over the next two to three years we expect the amount of information processed to increase dramatically. Sainsbury's is confident that the AViiON ccNUMA servers will support this growth." Up to 300 business users will interrogate the warehouse using a mix of business intelligence tools, including BRANN Viper and Information Advantage, depending on the nature of the queries. Other AV 20000 Customers Other AV 20000 customers include the Bloomberg Financial Markets; City of Temple in Texas, F.W. Webb, HBO Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO) A form of oxygen therapy in which the patient breathes oxygen in a pressurized chamber. Mentioned in: Ozone Therapy and Co., and Vanguard Cellular in the US; the Directorate of Information Systems in Belfast, Northern Ireland; Booker Food Group, Booker Belmont Wholesale, FSS FSS Federal Supply Service (US General Services Administration) FSS Flight Service Station FSS Family Self-Sufficiency FSS Fixed Satellite Service FSS Forensic Science Service (Great Britain) Travel & Leisure Ltd., GBS See GB/sec. Youngman, H P Bulmer Ltd, Texaco Ltd., and Travis Perkins Trading Co., in the UK; Universidade do Minho in Portugal; the Cairo Stock Exchange in Egypt; Gribbles Pathology in Australia, and Teaseung in Korea. Business Warehouse Program Data General recently announced the expansion of its Business Warehouse Program to target selected industries (retail, healthcare, telecommunications, and manufacturing), using the highly scalable AViiON AV 20000 ccNUMA-based server as the hardware platform. The company signed agreements with Constellar, Information Advantage, Quadstone, and VMARK Software to provide an integrated application solutions framework. Initially, this framework will be based on Oracle8 Universal Data Server, Oracle Express, and Oracle Discover. Second Generation NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) A multiprocessing architecture in which memory is separated into close and distant banks. NUMA is similar to SMP, in which multiple CPUs share a single memory. However, in SMP, all CPUs access a common memory at the same speed. The AViiON AV 20000 is the second generation of ccNUMA technology-based systems from Data General. The company has been shipping 16- and 32-processor AV 10000 ccNUMA systems based on the Motorola 88000 CPUs since early 1996. About Data General Data General (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :DGN DGN Design (file) DGN Dirección General de Normas (Standards Organization in Mexico) DGN MicroStation Design File (file format/extension) ), based in Westboro, Massachusetts, specializes in servers, storage systems, and related software and services for customers worldwide. The company reported revenues of $1.53 billion during fiscal 1997. Additional information on the company, its products and services is available on the Internet at http://www.dg.com -0- AViiON and CLARiiON are registered trademarks of Data General Corporation. All brand and product names appearing in the press release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. CONTACT: Data General Data General Jim Dunlap Carlos Soares 508/898-6546 508/898-6674 jim_dunlap@dg.com carlos_soares@dgc.ceo.dg.com |
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