ICL Plc and IBM Corp have signed an agreement to make ICL’s Content-Addressable File Store-based database Search Accelerator technology available on IBM’s RS/6000 Unix systems. The Search Accelerator is essentially a piece of hardware that enables users to off-load parallel searches of relational database tables to the machine’s input-output system. In its simplest from, it is designed to enhance ad hoc complex query performance on databases such as Oracle, Informix and Ingres. According to ICL, this reduces the central processor workload and doesn’t impact response times. The agreement with IBM requires no change or modification of the technology to run RS/6000s, says ICL. Pricing and availability will not be announced until next year.
