nCUBE and Oracle demonstrate scalable solution for very large databases.

FOSTER CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 27, 1995--nCUBE and Oracle Corp. today announced results of a demonstration in which an nCUBE massively parallel processing (MPP) computer running Oracle Parallel Server software version 7.1.3 provided performance figures for a variety of decision support benchmarks.

The system consistently delivered scan rates of 528MB/second, average load rates of 70KB/second per processor and scaling efficiency greater than 85 percent across 512 processors. Based on nCUBE scalable parallel technology, the 512 processor system achieved performance results in excess of six times faster than high-end IBM mainframes.

"This demonstration of the nCUBE 2S system is significant for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the most critical is scalability," said Robert Goldberg, vice president of marketing for nCUBE. "The system demonstrated virtually no performance degradation as the number of Oracle instances scaled to 60, 120, 240, and 440 processors -- 10 times more than our nearest competitor -- which is critical in the successful implementation of VLDBs. More importantly, this performance translates directly to increased savings and greater productivity for our customers."

Used by banks, airlines, retailers and other organizations for "data mining" of large databases, decision support systems allow corporations to glean strategic market information that may be hidden within their corporate and customer databases. The demonstration of the nCUBE 2S system used data and queries from the ticketing system of a major transportation company, and showed significant performance benefits compared to the company's current computing environment. Running as many as 440 instances of Oracle Parallel Server, the demonstration also provided near-linear performance improvements as the number of Oracle instances increased.

"The significance of running 440 instances of Oracle comes not only through the demonstration of scalability and price/performance, but this further demonstrates Oracle's understanding of the complexity of coordinating many Oracle instances against a single image database," said Scott Hunter, director of MPP technologies at Oracle. An Oracle instance is a single copy of the Oracle database running on a single microprocesor. By simultaneously running multiple Oracle instances in a parallel computer, databases can be searched much more rapidly than through traditional serial computing approaches.

"Parallel processing systems are causing fundamental changes in the way corporations use their data," stated Howard Richmond, vice president of high-performance commercial computing for the Gartner Group. "nCUBE and Oracle are setting new performance standards for open database computing."

Ideal for the unique computing demands of decision support services, the nCUBE 2S scalable parallel architecture can be configured with up to 8192 processors in a single computer. The nCUBE architecture's advanced scalable I/O capabilities provide extremely high disk-to-processor throughput, offering direct parallel links to many TeraBytes of disk capacity. The nCUBE 2S used in the decision support demonstration contained 512 processors and 336 GigaBytes of disk storage.

Oracle Corp., headquartered in Redwood Shores, is the world's largest supplier of database software. Oracle develops and markets an integrated family of software products for database management; tools for CASE, application development and office automation; and application packages for accounting and manufacturing. Oracle software runs on PCs, workstations, minicomputers, mainframes, and massively parallel computers.

The company offers its products, along with related consulting, education and support services, in 92 countries around the world. Oracle is a publicly held corporation whose shares are traded on NASDAQ/NMS with the ticker symbol ORCL.

Founded in 1983, nCUBE pioneered the development of scalable computing solutions and today is a leading supplier. nCUBE systems are designed to accommodate the high-performance computing needs of relational database, interactive multimedia, and selected scientific applications.

CONTACT: nCUBE Corporation

Rich Wyckoff, 415/508-5430

Miller Communications

Jodi Guilbault/Peter Ross, 415/962-9550