Fusion-io Claims Ability To Process World Debt

If all the credit card transactions in the world were gathered in one place, Fusion-io could process them, the company claims.

In a test to show the raw speed of transaction processing possible with Fusion-io’s solid-state memory storage subsystems, a single server test system reached 1.11 million transactions per second (tps). The system comprised a Fusion-io VSL (Virtual Storage Layer) common block interface software subsystem with four 1.2TB ioDrive2 NAND arrays, integrated into a 64-core AMD server.

Credit where credit is due

The target database was Microsoft’s SQL Server and inserts were done on 150 billion wide rows, into a single database table. This gave the figure of 1.1 million singleton inserts per second. When the same test was run using update statements, it reached 2.5 million updates per second.

On the basis that one credit card transaction comprises one debit, one credit, and one update of an account balance, this would equate to 25 billion of these composite transactions per day, the company calculated. This would cover all the credit card transactions made daily in the world from now until 2050 – allowing for a population increase to nine billion people.

Thomas Kejser, enterprise database specialist at Microsoft on the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team, said, “Today’s modern CPUs cannot be fed data fast enough with old approaches to application architecture. To fully leverage the possibilities of the NAND flash revolution in a way that utilises the hardware, IT professionals need to understand the properties of what we use to build our systems. For example, low latency architecture that uses NAND flash as part of the memory hierarchy helps avoid bottlenecks by integrating close to the CPU for low latency application performance, which is why Fusion-io was selected for this high scale demonstration.”

Neil Carson, Fusion-io’s CTO, commented that the test not only showed how Microsoft SQL Server and Fusion-io’s NAND storage achieve high scalability but also gave a real-world message.

“Given how consumers are embracing online shopping, we believe this achievement showcases how Fusion-io can help meet demand for servicing more digital transactions with an efficient, rapid and reliable solution,” he said.