NEWS BRIEFS

Concord, MASS. — Giganet, Inc., a leader in VI- based data center networks, today announced that Giganet’s Virtual Interface (VI) Architecture network products were key enablers in a record-breaking TPC- C (Transaction Processing Council) benchmark. The benchmark was run on Windows 2000 Advanced Server using the IBM DB2 Universal Database, thirty-two IBM Netfinity 8500R servers with four-way SMP, 700MHz Pentium III Xeon processors and Giganet’s server farm network. This record achieved roughly four times the number of clients supported and performance of the previous Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) record.

The benchmark record obtained an impressive 440,879 transactions per minute, compared to 101,657 in a previous record and 368,640 users were supported compared to 85,680 also in the previous record. This new OLTP record demonstrates the high performance, tremendous scalability and compatibility of solutions that combine Windows 2000, IBM DB2 clustered databases, IBM Netfinity systems and Giganet’s VI-based server farm networks.

“IBM Netfinity servers and DB2 Universal Databases are the choice for customers with mission-critical database applications requiring a powerful, reliable, and highly scalable enterprise-class platform,” said Don Roy, manager, Netfinity Marketing, IBM. “The combined Giganet, Microsoft, IBM Netfinity and DB2 solution has demonstrated incredible benchmark performance, providing businesses with an easy to configure, high performance solution to scaling multiple servers.”

“Windows 2000 Advanced Server’s inherent performance and scalability offers a robust platform for the growing demands of enterprise-level OLTP solutions,” stated Jim Ewel, marketing vice president for IT infrastructure and hosting at Microsoft Corp. “This latest record-breaking benchmark result demonstrates unprecedented performance for mission-critical database applications on Windows 2000 and was possible in part because of Microsoft’s close relationship with Giganet.”

TPC-C is an industry standard benchmark for measuring performance and scalability of OLTP systems. It tests a cross-section of database functionality and reinforces Giganet’s unique server farm networking capability to provide mission-critical Internet and commercial applications with the highest levels of performance and scalability. The TPC-C benchmark measures throughput in business transactions per minute for a simulated order entry/distribution environment. Specifically, it measures how many new order transactions per minute a system generates while the system is simultaneously executing four other transaction types such as payments, order status updates, deliveries and stock-level changes. System cost per transaction is also considered in determining the overall price/performance rating.

The TPC-C benchmark configuration consisted of 32 IBM Netfinity 8500R servers, with four-way SMP, 700MHz Pentium III Xeon processors, running Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server and IBM DB2 Universal Database Enterprise – Extended Edition (EEE) 7.1. Audited test data is posted on the TPC Web site, http://www.tpc.org. Giganet networks have become the platform of choice for a number of record-setting Windows 2000-based OLTP benchmarks, such as TPC-C and SAP R/3 SD.

“Giganet VI-based networks have set the standard in delivering unsurpassed database acceleration and scalability,” said Gareth Taube, Giganet’s vice president of Marketing. “As a provider of IBM ServerProven Netfinity and DB2 solutions, and as a Microsoft Windows 2000 industry partner, we are pleased to have played a integral part in this record setting benchmark.” Visit http://www.giganet.com/ for more information.

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