Following hard on the heels of Maspar Computer Corp’s initiative (CI No 2,561) IBM Corp has also come up with the idea of pushing massively parallel systems into the decision support market and has introduced a set of products and services called Powerquery for the SP2. It describes Powerquery as a set of scalable and flexible building blocks of IBM hardware, software and consulting services, and reckons it will make all the difference to everything from finding out that while they are nuts about red condoms in Duluth, in Portland (see Oregon and die), they only go for black ones, to schedule airline routes and crews as bad weather approaches. Powerquery is a package combining the Power RISC-based Scalable Powerparallel Systems SP2, DB2 Parallel Edition for AIX, and disk arrays. A base Powerquery configuration with a 10-node not very parallel Powerparallel processor, high-speed switch, 240Gb disk and basic software; DB2 Parallel Edition; and related planning installation services, would cost just over $1.8m. Maspar, by comparison wants $630,000 for a system with 1,024 – much simpler – processors, its Decision DB database but only 20Gb of disk. Powerquery should go into four customer sites in January with general availability set for the second quarter.
