White Cross Systems Ltd will unveil an enhanced version of its Transputer-based IDS/9010 parallel database server, the WX9020, at DB/Expo this week. The 9020 has a larger cabinet than its predecessor, holding up to 48 T425 processors – there are six to a board and each has 16Mb of memory – and the system is claimed to be more fault-tolerant – it has N+1 redundancy built in and does not crash should one part of the system fail. Each cabinet comes with 6Gb of RAM, and provides 30Gb of disk storage, although the Bracknell, Berkshire-based company will introduce a new disk controller later in the year. This will store up to 120Gb by supporting twice the number of disk drives of the previous model and providing disk compression capabilities. However, users can also connect different 9020 cabinets together via fibre optic links, and the White Cross Relational Database Software will still provide them with a single system image. The 9020 is targeted at such markets as retail, finance, insurance and telecommunications, where customers need to make complex queries to large amounts of data. It will start shipping in July, starting at $700,000 or ?150,000, the company promises.
