IBM Builds Data Warehousing Strategy On NUMA Technology
The future of Sequent Computer Systems' prized NUMAtechnology--secured in IBM's $810 million acquisition of the
company two months ago--is getting clearer. The highly
scalable, symmetric multiprocessing technology will become a
linchpin in IBM's data warehousing strategy. Already, NUMA-Q
servers are being subtly positioned as alternatives to IBM's
existing business-intelligence workhorse, the RS/6000.
IBM this week will open a data center of NUMA-Q systems that
will be devoted to helping companies test and deploy
business-intelligence applications. By February, the NUMA-Q
line will be able to run IBM's flagship database, Universal
DB2; the systems already support Oracle and Informix
databases.
NUMA, or Non-Uniform Memory Access, is a hardware-software
combination that works with Intel or RISC processors and
overcomes some of the limitations of other symmetric
multiprocessor platforms. NUMA-Q servers running Sequent's
Dynix Unix, and eventually the forthcoming Monterey Unix
operating system, on Intel Xeon processors could emerge as
IBM's preferred platform for business-intelligence
applications. "NUMA-Q fits nicely for the high-end sweet
spot, starting at 500 Gbytes of data," says Dan Graham,
global solutions executive with IBM Global Business
Intelligence Solutions.
IBM eventually plans to incorporate NUMA's memory-sharing
capabilities into its Windows NT Netfinity servers, PowerPC
RS/6000 line, and even the AS/400. But that won't happen
until 2001 at the earliest. In the meantime, IBM customers
will have to choose between the RS/6000 and NUMA-Q--not to
mention IBM's other server options--for data warehousing
projects. And IBM says it won't push NUMA-Q for data
warehousing until Windows 2000 is proven to be more scalable
than Windows NT.
Analysts say adding NUMA to IBM's RS/6000 SMP systems will
be an important advance. It's "the last best hope for the
RS/6000," says Wayne Kernochan, Aberdeen Group senior VP. He
maintains that IBM has lost data warehouse business to HP
and Sun because of the gap between its RS/6000 SMP hardware
and its massively parallel RS/6000 SP system.
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