SGI to Develop In-Memory Computing System

Jan. 14 — SGI, a trusted leader in high performance computing and big data and an SAP global technology partner, today announced plans to develop an in-memory appliance based on the SAP HANA platform, working in collaboration with SAP AG, the market leader in enterprise software and software-related services. Using the scalable shared memory architecture of SGI’s next-generation UV system together with SAP 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.

Today’s enterprises are experiencing rapid increases in database size, precipitating an immediate need for superior performance and accelerated transaction times to manage and analyze big data more efficiently and cost effectively. The new SGI computing system is expected to help enable businesses and government agencies running high volume databases and multi-tenant environments to leverage high performance DRAM that can offer up to 200x 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 to enable customers to reduce the cost of management by up to 50 percent compared with multi-node solutions.

“Many companies are running database sizes and multi-tenant environments that require exceptional scale-up capacity capabilities, where SGI leads with its expertise and technology,” said Jorge Titinger, president and CEO of SGI. “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.”

The SGI UV in-memory computing system based on SAP HANA will be scalable to manage the growing computing needs associated with enterprise big data. The increasing number of users accessing workloads and the growing volumes of data have triggered demand for systems that can meet larger processing needs. With many customers ready to surpass traditional thresholds, the powerful SGI UV high performance computing technology will enable customers to scale with ease — providing efficient and reliable performance to help handle workloads using up to 64 terabytes of memory. The SGI system’s ability to help manage high bandwidth data processing with low latency and offload engine support will help accelerate customers’ time to value in managing and analyzing their data.

“We anticipate that the combination of the SAP HANA platform with SGI’s high performance computing products will be a significant milestone for some of the world’s largest big data environments,” said Jack Miller, chief customer officer, SAP Platform Solutions. “High-end enterprise customers will be able to massively scale main memory, helping them more rapidly unlock the full value within their data.”

SGI expects to demonstrate the new appliance for SAP HANA in June 2014. General availability is anticipated in the third calendar quarter of 2014.