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SGI, slogging through some tough times due to cutbacks in high-performance computing contracts by the U.S. government, is now focusing on other facets of the big data analytics business.
The Milpitas, Calif.-based company revealed plans Jan. 14 to develop an in-memory database appliance to run longtime business partner SAP’s fast-rising HANA analytics software.
Back in October at its quarterly earnings call, SAP reported that HANA, the creation of SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner and launched in late 2010, brought $204 million to the revenue line in the third quarter, up from $134 million in the second quarter, for year-to-year growth of 79 percent—which is impressive sales traction.
HANA DB takes advantage of the low cost of main memory (RAM), data processing abilities of multicore processors and the fast data access of solid-state drives relative to traditional hard drives to deliver better performance of analytical and transactional applications.
Using the scalable shared memory architecture of SGI’s next-generation UV system together with HANA, the new in-memory appliance from SGI will be designed to streamline database management for single large-node environments, which require extremely high capacity and scale to meet the needs of in-memory databases.
The new SGI computing system is expected to help enable businesses and government agencies running high-volume databases and multitenant environments to utilize high-performance DRAM that can offer up to 200 times the performance of flash memory to help deliver faster insight.
In addition, SGI’s shared memory technology will enable unprecedented scale in a single node, helping customers reduce the cost of management by up to 50 percent compared with multinode solutions.
“Many companies are running database sizes and multitenant environments that require exceptional scale-up capacity capabilities, where SGI leads with its expertise and technology,” SGI President and CEO Jorge Titinger said.
“By working with SAP, a trusted provider to the enterprise and one of the innovative leaders in in-memory technology, SGI will now be able to target a significant high-end user requirement, representing an exciting market opportunity for us.”