From its inception, SGI has been about one thing: BIG DATA. Whether crunching it, storing it, or visualizing it, SGI systems have always excelled at helping people turn mountains of data into knowledge. So it is no coincidence that SGI systems are extremely well suited to running the data management software people use to manage overwhelming amounts of data. SGI platforms based on industry standards offer outstanding performance and total cost of ownership for users with demanding database challenges.

Designed to efficiently handle massive datasets and complex computational problems by enabling unsurpassed scalability, SGI Altix is uniquely suited to hosting in-memory database applications. The SGI® Altix® server family is based on SGI® NUMAflex® shared-memory architecture. This architecture provides unmatched scalability - giving users the ability to expand memory, I/O and processors independently to efficiently address specific processing requirements.

• Memory Scalability: A single Altix node, running one copy of the Linux® operating system, can scale up to 456GB or 12TB of shared memory respectively for mid-range Altix® 450 servers to high-end Altix® 4700 servers. Effectively, SGI Altix servers can accommodate as much of the database in memory as the software itself will permit.
• I/O Bandwidth: SGI Altix servers have demonstrated sustained I/O bandwidth of over 7 gigabytes per second and achieved a world-record 1 terabyte per second result on the STREAM Triad memory bandwidth benchmark.
• Processor Scalability: SGI Altix servers support from 1 to hundreds of processors per node, all operating against a pool of globally shared memory.

Because of its unique shared-memory scalability, Altix delivers efficient management of large data sets, access to massive data sets, and execution of more instructions per cycle, all of which boost overall performance of in-memory database applications.

SGI In-Memory Database solutions are enhanced by SGI® InfiniteStorage products, which are designed to ensure that the storage performance is high enough to keep up with the server architecture. SGI® Reconfigurable Application Specific Computing (RASC™) technology for Altix further boosts performance of frequently executed algorithms and database queries. This technology can provide substantial performance improvement for database applications that spend a majority of their run time on a set of specific algorithms. Examples include text search and pattern recognition routines, data mining, and very large database solutions that require sub-second response times.

For additional information:

• SGI Maximizes Productivity and Minimizes TCO: Bringing High Performance Open Systems to the Datacenter (PDF 129K)
• Global Shared Memory: SGI NUMAflex Architecture
• Proven Performance Gains and New Possibilities from Large Globally Shared Memory in SGI Altix
• SGI RASC Technology: Application Acceleration with FPGA-based Reconfigurable Computing