Sequent Posts TPC-C Benchmark
In an initial show of performance for its second-generation NUMA-Q 2000 servers, Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.,announced record-breaking TPC-C (Transaction Processing Performance Council Benchmark C) online transaction processing (OLTP) benchmark results for a single system running Oracle database software.
Sequent's second-generation NUMA-Q 2000 data center server achieved 48,793.4 transactions per minute (tpmC) running Oracle's Oracle8 database - a gain of more than 40 percent over the previous TPC-C leader for a single system running Oracle. The benchmark was conducted in Sequent's mixed-mode NUMACenter environment with Windows NT on the application tier and UNIX database servers.
"This first TPC-C result on NUMA-Q demonstrates the excellent scalability and performance of our architecture and Oracle8. This industry leading Oracle result is important to Sequent as a leading platform for demanding, large-scale Oracle implementations," said Jeff Pancottine, vice president of global marketing for Sequent. "We are committed to being the performance leader on Oracle, particularly as it drives next generation computing applications with Oracle8 and this result is just the beginning."
"Sequent's second-generation NUMA-Q 2000 has proven that it can deliver scalable performance in a single system. Sequent and Oracle have a winning partnership that shows through in these benchmarks. Sequent NUMA-Q architecture and its depth of Oracle expertise come together in these numbers," said Kevin Walsh, Vice President of Intel Technologies Division for Oracle Corporation.
"With more than 10 years of experience developing Intel-based solutions, Sequent continues to reach new heights in performance and scalability as it takes the advantages of Intel Architecture up into the data center," said Tom Macdonald, marketing director, Intel's Enterprise Server Group. "This latest benchmark underscores the significant performance gains of Intel's Pentium II Xeon processor and Sequent's new NUMA-Q 2000 server."
The Benchmark System
The benchmarks were run on Sequent's second-generation NUMA-Q 2000 server. The system featured 32 Intel Pentium II Xeon processors, 32 GB memory and 16 fibre channel host adapters. The benchmark system ran Oracle8 database software. The system tested will be available on March 15, 1999.
The TPC-C benchmark, which simulates a rigorous OLTP environment, measures transaction processing performance and price/performance for large commercial workloads. The benchmark tests all aspects of system, processor, memory, disk I/O and user input/output and is measured by two metrics - transactions per minute (tpmC) and price/performance ($/tmpC).
Product Overview
Sequent's second-generation NUMA-Q 2000 servers are scalable to 64 Pentium II Xeon processors and feature an industry leading fibre channel subsystem and dynamic partitioning capabilities. Sequent's NUMA-Q architecture offers customers unequaled flexibility in building infrastructure for large-scale e-commerce, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and decision support applications. NUMA-Q provides massive scalability required to address growth in concurrent users and raw data.
Sequent is helping customers leverage this architectural flexibility to embrace new data center standards like Microsoft Windows NT and Intel's up-coming IA-64, while utilizing proven technologies where they are required to ensure service levels. NUMA-Q is the engine underlying Sequent's UNIX and Windows NT mixed-mode NUMACenter environment.
Oracle8, the next-generation universal data server from Oracle, delivers tremendous advances over the characteristics that propelled Oracle7 technology to industry leadership. As a key component of Network Computing Architecture, Oracle8 is designed to support all of a customer's users and data, providing a high-speed and cost-effective system for running business applications.
About Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.
Sequent Computer Systems is committed to the success of its end-user and system integrator customers. Sequent's platform architectures and services are optimized for the scalability, availability and manageability requirements of corporate and institutional data center environments leveraging industry-standard technologies and best-in-class partnerships.
Sequent was the world's fastest-growing server vendor with systems priced between $100K and $1M in 1997 on the strength of NUMA-Q 2000, and has been the number one vendor of high-end UNIX servers in the UK for the past seven years, according to IDC. Sequent supports more than 10,000 installations worldwide, including many of the world's largest and most sophisticated OLTP, DSS and RDBMS applications.