32-proc. server from NEC posts faster score than competitive 64-proc.server - NEC Express5800/1000 Series

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Oct 13, 2003

NEC Corporation (NEC) has announced another breakthrough TPC benchmark score for its Express5800/1000 Series server, making it the fastest 32-way server in the world to run Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition (64-bit). The 32-way, NEC Express5800/1320Xd posted a score of 577,530.77 tpmC at a price/performance of $10.81 tpmC, which bests its previous score by almost 10% (posted 9/8/03) and is 8% less in price per transaction. Additionally, this result moves ahead of a non-clustered, RISC-based HP Superdome Enterprise server using twice the amount of processors (64 processors) that posted test scores on July 30, 2003(3). Testing was conducted on the NEC server running Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition (64-bit). The NEC server tested is based on Intel Itanium 2 Processor 6M (Madison) processor.

"The new NEC benchmark is further evidence that the SQL Server and Windows platform provides all the performance of competitive systems at a fraction of the cost," said Gordon Mangione, vice president of the SQL Server business group at Microsoft Corp. "In addition, the flexibility offered by a server that can grow with user needs from 8 to 32 processors and dynamically allocate resources will make life a lot easier for IT managers running multiple systems to meet user demand."

The 577,530.77 transactions per minute (tpmC) benchmark score was accomplished, in part, by leveraging NEC's highly scalable, ccNUMA system architecture utilizing 32 Intel Itanium2 processors. Furthermore, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) database software has been designed to take advantage of system and processor advancements made by both NEC and Intel. TPC-C is an industry-standard benchmark for measuring a system's processing performance based on an enterprise transaction model for handling orders.

The benefits of 64-bit computing for commercial and research database applications include 64-bit addressing of large-scale data sets. 32-bit systems operating today can address far fewer memory addresses than 64-bit systems, which can address up to 1024 TB of memory addresses (by Intel Itanium 2's specification). This provides outstanding system responsiveness for mission-critical enterprise applications. In addition to providing 64-bit memory addressing, NEC's server design with the Intel Itanium2 processor provides high memory throughput and low memory latency achieved by NEC's chipset that enables highly scalable SMP (Symmetric Multi Processors). Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition improves the efficiency of the operating system by applying NUMA awareness to application processes, default affinity settings, thread scheduling, and memory management.

The NEC Express5800/1000 server series has also been designed to support future Itanium processor families, thus sustaining their leading edge technology and long-term value.

The high-performance NEC Express5800/1320Xd server, with 32 Intel Itanium2 processors 6M, is currently available for order North America. Systems configured as tested for the TPC benchmark tests will be available beginning December 2003. Further information about the server is available at www.nec64.com or by calling 866-632-3226.