Intel President and CEO Craig Barrett outlined a design principle for e-businesses and enterprise computing that will transform the way companies build and run their computing and communications infrastructures.
In a keynote speech delivered at Oracle Openworld, San Francisco, Barrett emphasised how 'macroprocessing' provides a choice of innovative and cost-effective computing solutions that companies can customise and scale to match their data centre needs. Macroprocessing is a deployment model where benefits of the microprocessor, such as volume economics, performance, innovation and industry standards, are extended to meet the demands and opportunities of servers in the Internet-enabled enterprise.
"From one design approach, information technologists are able to build an unlimited number of solutions to meet their specific data centre requirements," stressed Barrett. "Today's competitive realities and challenges of e-business drive corporations to adapt their compute models, and macroprocessing allows companies to shift from proprietary systems to open standards. This standards-based macroprocessing principle is the elegant design approach for the most complex IT challenges."
Barrett showcased examples of macroprocessing implementations from business, government and the scientific community, which use the power of Intel Architecture and Oracle9i Real Application Clusters to build large complex and scalable database solutions. Dell, the Federal Aviation Administration and European scientific organisation CERN illustrated how macroprocessing is solving the most complex computing challenges. Dell described how it is building highly scalable databases to support Dell's mission critical global applications. The FAA example discussed a powerful implementation of Intel Xeon processor-based servers running Oracle9i Real Application Clusters that can be used to monitor flight patterns in realtime from FAA command centres. The CERN testimonial explained how the need for high performance computing to perform scientific research on sub-atomic particles was accomplished by using clusters of Xeon processor-based servers.
Investing in the future of macroprocessing
In the first technology demonstration of Intel's future 'McKinley' 64 bit processor running Oracle9i Real Application Clusters, Barrett showed how systems are able to scale to match the future processing requirements of larger databases, rich media, web services and other e-business applications. The demonstration featured the McKinley processor (Intel's second product from its Itanium processor family) in a four-node cluster configuration with binary-compatible Itanium processors and the Intel Xeon processors. He demonstrated how doctors can securely access and review patient medical records more quickly when using fingerprint recognition technology, and how this configuration has the power to search through a video database of hundreds of thousands of multimedia files.
"Technology is not slowing and continues to be driven by Moore's Law, increasing bandwidth, and a growing network. The Internet will be the centre of commerce, communications, research, information and entertainment, and companies must invest in Internet technologies that are cost-effective and grow with the businesses needs," Barrett said. "The Internet is evolving to a services model, where applications interact with each other on any device using Internet standards-based infrastructure. Companies need to be ready to fully realise the capabilities of the Internet through macroprocessing."
He explained how Intel's products and architectures are focused on providing the fundamental computing and communications building blocks of the Internet.
For further information contact Fathima Haniff, Intel, (011) 806 4542, [email protected]
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