Engineers achieve breakthrough

Chinese engineers have for the first time designed and produced an advanced server and database system as an alternative to foreign-made products that currently dominate the domestic market, according to the Beijing Institute of Computer Technology and Application.

Researchers at the institute, a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp's Second Academy, used domestically designed processors, servers, operating systems and software to build the Tianyue Data Warehouse Appliance.

Tianyue is capable of performing about 9.4 million transactions per minute in testing scenarios designed by the China Software Testing Center and Tsinghua University. This means it can deliver the third-fastest database performance in the world after Oracle's SPARC Supercluster and IBM's Power 780 Server, said Gu Peng, a senior designer in charge of the machine's development at the institute.

Gu said that, like central processing units and operating systems, the capability to produce database servers measures the true strength of a nation in the field of information technology. He said China has lagged in this regard.

Determined to change the situation, the institute invested heavily in Tianyue's research and development and worked out a unique operating method different from imported foreign models, Gu said.

He added that engineers have also produced software that can transfer data currently now stored in foreign-made devices to the domestic type.

Shen Shiguang, deputy head of the institute, said the Tianyue system has been used in China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp's intranet, which is used to handle classified information, and will be introduced to other sectors that need to manage large volumes of data related to national security, such as power and financial industries.