Success in any enterprise depends on having the best available information in time to make sound decisions. Anything less can waste opportunities, cost time and resources, and even put the organization at risk. But finding crucial information to guide the best possible actions can mean analyzing billions of data points and petabytes of data, whether to predict an outcome, identify a trend, or chart the best course through a sea of ambiguity. Companies with this type of intelligence on demand can react faster and make better decisions than their competitors.

Continuing innovations in analytics provide companies with an intelligence windfall that benefits all areas of the business. When you need critical information urgently, the platform that delivers this information should be the last thing on your mind. The platform needs to be as simple, reliable, and immediate as a light switch, able to handle almost incomprehensible workloads without complexity getting in the way. It must be built for longevity, with a technology foundation that can sustain performance as more users run increasingly complex workloads and as data volumes continue to grow. Furthermore, to maximize returns to the business, it needs the lowest total cost of ownership.

The IBM® PureData™ System for Analytics, powered by Netezza® technology, transforms the data warehouse and analytics landscape with a platform that is built to deliver price-performance with appliance simplicity. It can carry out monumental processing challenges quickly, without barriers or compromises. For users and their organizations, it provides the best intelligence for all who need it, even as demands for information escalate.

As a purpose-built appliance for high-speed analytics, the PureData System for Analytics strength comes from having the right components assembled and working together to maximize performance. Massively parallel processing (MPP) streams combine multi-core CPUs with Netezza’s unique Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) Accelerated Streaming Technology (FAST) engines to deliver performance that in many cases exceeds expectations. In addition, the system delivers results with no required indexing or tuning. Appliance simplicity extends to application development, enabling organizations to innovate rapidly and to bring high performance analytics to a wider range of users and processes.

This IBM Redguide™ publication introduces the Asymmetric Massively Parallel Processing (AMPP) architecture and describes how the system orchestrates queries and analytics to achieve speed. It shows how software and hardware come together to extract the maximum use from every critical component and how a system optimized for thousands of users querying huge data volumes really works. The AMPP architecture is a unique data warehouse and analytics platform whose price-performance is ready for today’s needs and tomorrow’s challenges.

Executive overview

Architectural principles

System building blocks

Where extreme performance happens: Inside an S-Blade

Turbocharging the S-Blades: The power of Netezza technologies FAST Engines

Orchestrating queries on PureData System for Analytics

Summary