Nasdaq upgrades HP-based trading system

Through a three-year contract extension, the Nasdaq electronic stock market has upgraded a Hewlett-Packard system that processes about 2.6 million trades and distributes about 7.5 million price quotes each day, HP announced Monday. Nasdaq switched 500 processors in the system, a relatively exotic HP NonStop machine, from MIPS s86000 to newer MIPS s88000 models. Eventually, Nasdaq will switch to Intel Itanium processors, HP said.

Nasdaq also uses HP OpenView software to manage and monitor the system, and HP StorageWorks Reference Information Storage System for data storage. NonStop systems, originally sold by a company called Tandem, have run the core of Nasdaq since 1982. Compaq Computer acquired Tandem in 1997, and HP acquired Compaq in 2002.

[tbegonja]

Exotic?

<<relatively exotic HP NonStop machine>>

Since when is a Tandem NonStop server exotic?
A real nice box, definitely. Robust and fault-
tolerant? Absolutely. Full-featured native
operating system? Big time. Does it also run *NIX?
Yes! (POSIX)

But exotic? EXOTIC???

[Andrew J Glina]

True

Not the word I would use either, although the dictionary meaning (strikingly strange or unusual) is does apply. "Relativly exotic" is a weird combination however.

[Gregory L Hart]

"Exotic"? "A company called Tandem"? Where have YOU been?

This story reveals the author as a brash young novice with no ability to research. Please direct your attention to the following and learn valuable information.

Tandem was the first commercial fail-safe level fault tolerant machine and dates back to 1975 when the "Silicon Valley" was just starting to boom. With all the talk about and effort behind clustering, nothing has ever met or exceeded the capabilities of a Tandem NonStop, either as a single machine of two to sixteen CPUs or as a network of up to thousands of machines. Stratus came close, others have tried and failed miserably, but only Tandem succeeds.

Would it surprise you to know the great majority of ATM and POS (credit/debit card payments) connect directly to Tandems and route through networks of Tandems? How about stock trades and quotes, gift cards, prescription services, order processing and fulfillment, shipping and tracking, electronic benefits, even state lotteries and CIA/NSA communications? Wherever true fault tolerance is necessary there is Tandem!

Thirty years on, the Tandem is still genius and has provided me good income and opportunities I likely would not have seen otherwise for the past twenty four years. Unfortunately, subsequent to acquisition by Compaq then HP, the excellent Tandem platform has not been marketed agressively and has languished like a red-headed step child, leaving continuing sales much to the installed base that swears by them. There is much room for this situation to improve under new HP leadership!

So then, "exotic" and just some "company called Tandem"? It is THE platform of choice for serious fault tolerant and netorking needs and OLTP (note to author: On-Line Transaction Processing).

[Shankland]

author response: NonStop on the sidelines

I'm not a brash young novice; I've been covering the server market for more than six years and know full well what OLTP means. I don't claim an intimate knowledge of Tandem, which failed as an independent business before I took over the beat, but I interviewed Jimmy Treybig once and Pauline Nist several times. I'm not totally ignorant.

The Tandem/NonStop machines are indeed impressive, but they are not relevant to the vast majority of server buyers today. Their reliability is justly famed, and the technical achievement of running a database across such a large cluster is also remarkable. Oracle 10g is feeble by comparison. Tandem/NonStop users are justified in some sniggering at boasts that a database runs across a cluster of eight four-Xeon servers.

But as the market has shown on any number of occasions, technical quality doesn't ensure success. How many college students today are familiar with NSK compared to Linux or Windows? How many software companies produce products for NonStop machines? How many consultants have practices around their installation and use? Is Tandem's share of the overall server market increasing? You need more than Posix compliance to be a driving force in the computing industry. Mainstream servers may be underpowered and flaky by comparison, but they get the job done for a lot of people.

I agree that HP doesn't aggressively market Tandem. It's the same story with OpenVMS: A respected, powerful operating system that's relegated to the sidelines of the industry.

I plan to dip my toes back into the NonStop waters as the transition from MIPS to Itanium processors grows nearer. I welcome any feedback from anyone who wants to share comments--customers, engineers, marketing executives in snappy suits. Postings such as this one are a good way to broadcast opinions, but readers also can e-mail me directly as well; my e-mail address is a mailto link at the top of the story.