IBM Sets Price, Performance Records for 32-Node Netfinity Server Cluster on Windows NT.SOMERS, NY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 13, 1999-- Teraplex Center will Help ISVs Optimize Software for Large, Commercially Available, Multi-Node Clusters of Netfinity Servers 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) today shattered the Windows NT (Windows New Technology) A 32-bit operating system from Microsoft for Intel x86 CPUs. NT is the core technology in Windows 2000 and Windows XP (see Windows). Available in separate client and server versions, it includes built-in networking and preemptive multitasking. scalability barrier with the industry's first-ever one terabyte TPC-D A benchmark that measures decision support performance. See TPC. (b) benchmark on Windows NT. Using a 32-node cluster of IBM's Intel-based Netfinity(a) servers running IBM DB2(a) Universal Database, IBM set new records for price performance and power for one terabyte of user data(1), out performing a 64-way Sun Ultra-SPARC and all other server systems in the industry. The benchmark effectively demonstrates that IBM is the only vendor that can offer true scalability -- the ability to incrementally grow the server/database solution as customer needs change -- on Windows NT. "We're taking the same technologies developed for mainframe systems and applying them to IBM's Netfinity servers," said Phil Hester, chief technology officer, IBM PSG PSG, n polysomnograph; polygraph performed during sleep. Physiological variables such as pulse, blood pressure, and respiration are monitored and charted. . "Our experience in clustering, 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 and other system-critical areas has allowed us to deliver performance and scalability from standard Netfinity servers rivaling that of mainframes." "The race for ownership of the high-end NT data warehouse marketplace is on and IBM has taken a clear leadership position," said Stephen Brobst, Strategic Technologies Systems. "The astounding a·stound tr.v. a·stound·ed, a·stound·ing, a·stounds To astonish and bewilder. See Synonyms at surprise. [From Middle English astoned, past participle of astonen, benchmark results delivered by DB2 Universal Database and clustered Netfinity servers clearly raise the stakes by demonstrating record-setting performance on NT with very high scalability." Clustering Help for ISVs The 32-node Netfinity cluster will become a cornerstone of the Netfinity Partners in Development program. Through the program, IBM offers ISVs and operating systems Operating systems can be categorized by technology, ownership, licensing, working state, usage, and by many other characteristics. In practice, many of these groupings may overlap. vendors technical resources and expertise to help them optimize their products for the Netfinity platform. Housing the cluster, a Teraplex Center will provide a "real-world" testing ground Noun 1. testing ground - a region resembling a laboratory inasmuch as it offers opportunities for observation and practice and experimentation; "the new nation is a testing ground for socioeconomic theories"; "Pakistan is a laboratory for studying the use of American for vendors to research, measure and tune their applications for large, clustered enterprise environments. The capabilities of the Teraplex Center are unmatched by other hardware vendors: IBM is the first and only vendor to demonstrate the ability to handle a terabyte of data on NT, a capability once only the province of mainframes. Additionally, IBM is the only vendor to test systems with multiple users, running the TPC-D benchmark with eight parallel query streams, more accurately representing a real user environment and a new record for concurrency Operations that are performed simultaneously within the computer. For example, dual-core CPUs provide complete overlapping of two independent processes. See dual core, hyperthreading, multiprocessing, multitasking, multithreading, SMP and MPP. concurrency - multitasking . Real Performance, Real Hardware: Right Now Not only does this benchmark establish new records for database capability, but the records were broken with hardware that is readily available today: IBM Netfinity servers and IBM Serial Storage Architecture Serial Storage Architecture - (SSA) IBM's proposed ANSI standard for a standard high-speed interface to disk clusters and arrays. SSA allows full-duplex packet multiplexed serial data transfers at rates of 20Mb/sec in each direction. Disk technology. "IBM's Serial Storage Architecture disk subsystem was a critical component of this record-breaking TPC-D result," said Frank Elliot, vice president, marketing and strategy, IBM Storage Systems Division. "The subsystem's full duplexed connection combined with the ease of management capabilities enable both the high scalability, reliability and performance needed to complement the total system configuration used in achieving this world record." The performance breakthroughs, which were verified by Transaction Processing Performance Council Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) is a non-profit organization founded in 1985 to define transaction processing and database benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable TPC performance data to the industry. (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 (b)) auditors on January 11, 1999, ranked the 32-node Netfinity cluster and DB2 Universal Database as the performance and price/performance leader among all hardware and database vendors for 1000GB TPC-D results. The planned availability of the DB2 Universal Database software used to achieve these results is June 30, 1999. An executive summary of the TPC-D report can be obtained on the Internet from IBM Netfinity at http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/techlink/perform.html. The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) Benchmark D simulates data modeling and trend analysis of information contained within a large database such as a data mart A subset of a data warehouse for a single department or function. A data mart may have tens of gigabytes of data rather than hundreds of gigabytes for the entire enterprise. See data warehouse. or data warehouse. Customers can use TPC-D results to better understand the relative performance of business intelligence systems from different vendors. More information on the TPC-D benchmark can be found at the Transaction Processing Performance Council web site at http://www.tpc.org. (1) In TPC-D benchmark testing. 36,872 QppD@1000GB, 8,166.9 QthD@1000GB, $352/QphD@1000GB. Availability Date June 30, 1999. Additional details are available at http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/techlink/perform.html. Results referenced in this document are current as of January 11, 1999. (a) Trademark or registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp. (b) TPC Benchmark, TPC-D, QppD, QthD and QphD are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council. All other company/product names and service marks may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Editors' Note: All IBM news releases are available on the Internet at http://www.ibm.com/press. Specific information about IBM Netfinity products, services and support can be located at http://www.ibm.com/netfinity. Information about IBM DB2 Universal Database can be found at http://www.software.ibm.com/data/db2/udb/. |
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