Do you need a proof point for how the AMD Direct Connect architecture can help your business scale?  I’ll give you a million.  Well, 1, 009,384 to be exact.

This week, Fusion-io, a leading provider of enterprise-class solid state technology, announced a major milestone.  You may already be familiar with the ProLiant DL785, the 8-processor powerhouse server from HP, which features eight AMD Opteron™ processors. Fusion-io reports it was able to pump out an astonishing performance level, more than 1 million IOPS using the fio benchmark. They also claim sustained throughput was over 9GB, or roughly the capacity of two DVDs, per second.

In the past, when you talked about the million IOPS performance level, you were always talking about mainframe-class systems.  Today, we are talking about industry-standard x86 servers.

The HP DL875 takes the AMD Direct Connect architecture to new levels, providing the high end systems expertise to bring enterprise-class database and virtualization to x86 levels of value. With 8 processors and up 512GB of memory, this system provides the scalability and capacity for even the most demanding workloads.

Fusion-io uses NAND flash memory in PCI Express slots to help bring data as close to the processors as possible, helping reduce latency and helping drive up the IO throughput per second.  HP also utilizes the Fusion-io technology in its BladeSystem products through a product called the HP StorageWorks IO Accelerator. Each BladeSystem server can support 2 or 3 of these IO accelerator cards to help drive greater performance while also helping hold power consumption down.

Yes, power consumption.  And before you start thinking that power consumption and 8 processor servers don’t generally correlate well, keep in mind that the larger the server footprint is, the more energy efficiency comes into play, helping hold down the power budget for the rack.

So what does this mean to you?  Several things.

As a Fusion-io customer it means that you can utilize state of the art solid state technology to break through the traditional system bottlenecks and reach entirely new levels of I/O throughput.

As an HP customer it means that you have platforms that can handle your most demanding enterprise applications.  And you can be confident that the engineering know-how that helped reach this unprecedented level of performance in an 8P system also helps drive outstanding levels of performance in the ProLiant BladeSystems as well.

As an AMD customer, you know it means that the AMD Direct Connect architecture is scalable enough to handle any of your workloads with exception I/O throughput through our use of the industry-standard HyperTransport™ technology.

And, as a customer or Fusion-io, HP and AMD, you can smile, confident in knowing that the combination of these potent technologies and platforms is delivering just what you need to solve today’s business challenges.

You’ve got a reason to smile, or, more accurately, a million reasons to smile.

John Fruehe is the Director of Business Development for Server/Workstation products at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.