Huawei Unveils New-Generation Servers That Provide Performance Comparable to Midrange Computers

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Beijing, China, February 25, 2014 – Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, unveiled several new products today at its "2014 Surpass and Win the Future" press conference at the Kerry Hotel in Beijing on February 24. Huawei launched three new-generation servers: the 8-socket RH8100 V3 using Intel® Xeon® E7-8800 v2 processors, the 4-socket RH5885H V3 rack server using Intel® Xeon® E7-4800 v2 processors, and the 4-socket CH242 V3 compute node (for enterprises' mission-critical applications) of the E9000 converged architecture blade server (the E9000 for short).

As servers are upgraded for higher computing performance to handle increased volumes of service data and more and more complex services, the stability and scalability of servers have become more and more important in service platforms. Building on its long-term technology accumulation and profound understanding on customers' services, Huawei provides the new-generation servers based on the advantageous features of Intel® Brickland platform (Xeon® E7 v2 processors). Incorporating Huawei's technology and hardware design of the 32-socket fault-tolerant servers and advantages in the BIOS, OS, and management software, the new-generation Huawei V3 4-socket and 8-socket servers offer IT solutions with Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) comparable to midrange computers to enhance x86 servers' RAS features for applications.

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The RH8100 V3 provides the most comprehensive 60 RAS features and strong computing performance and scalability. Huawei's hardware partitioning technology enables an 8-socket system to be used as two 4-socket servers, fully utilizing resources to maximize customers' return on investment (ROI). The RH8100 V3 supports three generations of processors, meets the requirements for high-speed 80GbE connections in the future, and provides complete platform management solutions.

The 4-socket RH5885H V3 rack server supports 53 RAS features. Based on Intel® Xeon® E7-4800 v2 processors, it shattered the world records of the integer computing and floating-point computing performance tests. Compared with the Huawei RH5885 V2, the RH5885H V3 improves computing performance by 100% and memory capacity by 200%. The RH5885H V3 provides up to 16 PCIe slots to fulfill customer requirements for flexible service expansion.

Besides the RAS features, the 4-socket CH242 V3 features a high bandwidth, including the memory bandwidth and I/O throughput capability. In a compact blade space, the E9000 CH242 V3 implements the 100% memory bandwidth of the Intel® Brickland platform at the highest DDR3 frequency (1600 MHz), while the competitive servers half the number of memory expansion chips to achieve this. The E9000 CH242 V3 provides three PCIe slots for installing application acceleration cards such as GPUs and PCIe SSDs. The E9000 CH242 V3 is an ideal choice for the online data analysis, decision making support system, and integrated appliance.

With High Stability and Reliability, Huawei New-Generation Servers Provide RAS Features Comparable to Midrange Computers

Huawei is not only capable of designing hardware systems and architecture platforms with high performance, reliability, and energy efficiency, but also has outstanding end-to-end R&D capabilities with professional laboratories and R&D teams that focus on systems, interconnection, chips, and energy conservation.

The new-generation Huawei servers provide industry-leading technology and quality with improved RAS features, management, and maintenance.

Use a fully redundant architecture and a modular design with up to 60 RAS features;

Support memory migration based on BIOS;

Provide the advanced hot swappable memory riser technology that is independent of an OS;

Support multiple memory RAS features, such as memory fault precaution, Double Device Data Correction (DDDC), DDDC+1, memory mirroring, and memory sparing;

Implement the link-level fault tolerance and retry mechanism, achieving error data retransmission on QPI links interconnected processors and QPI links interconnected processors and DIMMs, and QPI link failover;

Support online maintenance by using hot-swappable DIMMs, PCIe cards, hard disks, fan modules, PSUs, and DVD modules, which prevents services from being interrupted;

Support stable operation at 40°C based on an excellent structure and heat dissipation designs, which reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) and maximizing the ROI.

Excellent Performance Thanks to Continuous Hardware and Software Optimization

On February 18, 2014, Intel launched Xeon® E7 v2 processors and released that the Huawei RH5885H V3 shattered the world records of the integer computing performance test (SPECint*_rate_base2006) and floating-point computing performance test (SPECfp*_rate_base2006).

On the same day, SAP published the authentication result for the new-generation HANA memory database appliance. The Huawei RH5885H V3 is the first server that passed the SAP HANA hardware authentication. Huawei is one of the first three vendors for the SAP HANA appliance.

In addition, the new-generation Huawei V3 4-socket servers achieved industry-leading performance test results in several benchmark tests, such as the TPC-E test with the transaction database based on Microsoft SQL Server, VMmark virtualization test, and Huawei FusionSphere virtualization test.

With Innovation and Cooperation, Huawei Servers Make Successive Breakthroughs

In the past few years, Huawei has extended the influence of its servers in global markets by making a series of critical breakthroughs in regions and industries all over the world. According to o Gartner's report on February 3, 2014, Huawei's annual server shipments ranked fourth globally and second in China in 2013. Huawei achieved the fastest increase in shipments among competitors in global markets.

"Huawei is always dedicated to providing professional, reliable solutions based on products with excellent performance, outstanding quality, high stability, and high reliability," said Qiu Long, General Manager of Huawei's Server Department, at the press event. "In the past year, Huawei servers have made great breakthroughs in global markets and industries, demonstrating Huawei's leading position in the server field. The Huawei new-generation servers use enhanced x86 servers' RAS features for applications, which enables solutions to achieve higher reliability, performance, and competitiveness."

Huawei servers are high-performance, high-reliability, and high-availability solutions tailored to handling enterprises' core applications. Huawei servers aim to provide full support for infrastructure and application deployments and create significant value for customers by using the industry-leading underlying key chips and architecture design, highly efficient and available management platform, powerful ecosystem, and customized, innovative solutions.

He Xiaodong, Director of Product Marketing in the Data Centers and Cloud Computing Business of Intel (China), spoke at this press conference and said, "In the cloud computing era, with its large-scale R&D and innovations, Huawei is capable of providing future-proof IT solutions for customers. Intel and Huawei have been good partners for a long time. The Huawei new-generation servers mark this continued cooperation and provide high-value solutions with performance comparable to midrange computers through upgraded technologies and updated products that are accessible to more customers."

Lu Dongming, Director of the Big Data Architecture Department of SAP China, also attended this press event. He said, "As SAP's first Chinese partner for technological cooperation, Huawei provides industry-leading technologies and excellent products and solutions." Huawei SAP HANA® appliance based on Huawei servers provides advantageous performance and reliability in high-performance databases and business intelligence (BI) analysis, and brings the benefits of high efficiency and ease-of-use to customers."

With its technological strengths and penetrating insights into markets, Huawei focuses on providing innovative, high-quality products and services. Moreover, Huawei continues to pursue openness and cooperation, and partners with customers to provide innovative, future-proof products based on requirements, helping customers gain enhanced core competencies. The Huawei new-generation servers using Intel® Xeon® E7 v2 processors set new benchmarks for mission-critical solutions that provide performance comparable to midrange computers. This accelerates the migration from midrange computers to x86 servers and lays the foundation for providing future-oriented solutions for mission-critical applications.