ComputerWorld.in

When it comes to talking about performance, speed turns people's heads. Bring up racing cars in a room full of folks discussing sedans and pickup trucks, and you'll see what I mean.

The same goes for computing, as most folks who run quiet business systems are fascinated by talk of HPC (high-performance computing) systems, the racing cars of IT.

But whereas finding practical use for a racing car outside of competition is difficult, without HPC systems, many companies would fall flat. And as demand for fast, responsive storage increases, HPC will likely become more than just a topic of conversation -- it will be an essential component of IT success for many more companies.

At least that is the contention of SGI and DataDirect Networks, which recently announced somewhat complementary solutions -- a database accelerator and a storage array, respectively -- that promise unrivaled results in database access and nontransactional applications performance.

In speaking with vendors, I often hear all sorts of claims of new world records, so I wasn't surprised when Ken Won, director of enterprise solutions marketing at SGI, mentioned that SGI had seen up to tenfold improvements in performance using Oracle 10g during a recent benchmark test.

Key to the benchmark success were the Oracle Times Ten In-Memory Database and the exceptional memory capacity (128GB per node) of the SGI Altix 450. Moreover, according to Won, the benchmark configuration proved to be environmentally friendly, requiring less energy for power and cooling. And it's easy to understand why: To attain higher performance, you must line up hundreds or thousands of disk drives -- a requirement that all but disappears when you can tap up to 48TB of more energy-efficient, more compact in-memory database capacity, Won explains.