Hewlett-Packard (HP) took the wraps off a new top-of-the line NonStop server Wednesday, the NonStop S86000, that HP says offers as much as a 170 percent performance boost, according to HP"s internal order-entry benchmark, over previous NonStop S-series servers.
The S86000 features the MIPS R14000 microprocessor, 8M bytes of cache, the option of 1G byte, 2G bytes, 4G bytes or 16G bytes of memory per processor and a new high-speed hard disk drive. The system offers twice the cache and up to four times the maximum memory in existing NonStop S-series servers, HP said. A user can aggregate as many as 4,000 processors in a single system configuration, similar to a cluster, HP said.
"This is now the highest performance NonStop server," said Pauline Nist, vice president and general manager of HP"s NonStop Enterprise Division.
Upgrading the processors in an existing system will result in as much as a 90 percent performance boost, according to Nist. However, users who buy a new system, with faster hardware and improved software, can get up to 170 percent better performance, she said. HP"s NonStop server group has its own "order entry benchmark" for measuring the server speed. The R14000 processor was manufactured by NEC Corp., HP said. The previous NonStop flagship product uses the R12000 MIPS processor, from the same manufacturer.