The DBC/1012 Data Base Computer was a

database machine A database machines or back end processor is a computer or special hardware that stores and retrieves data from a database. It is specially designed for database access and is tightly coupled to the main ( front-end) computer(s) by a high-speed cha ...

introduced by

Teradata Teradata Corporation is an American software company that provides cloud database and analytics-related software, products, and services. The company was formed in 1979 in Brentwood, California, as a collaboration between researchers at Caltech a ...

Corporation in 1984, as a back-end

data base management system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...

for mainframe computers. The DBC/1012 harnessed multiple

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

microprocessors, each with its own dedicated

disk drive Disk storage (also sometimes called drive storage) is a general category of storage mechanisms where data is recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer of one or more rotating disks. A disk drive is ...

, by interconnecting them with the Ynet switching network in a

massively parallel processing Massively parallel is the term for using a large number of computer processors (or separate computers) to simultaneously perform a set of coordinated computations in parallel. GPUs are massively parallel architecture with tens of thousands of t ...

system. The DBC/1012 was designed to manage databases up to one terabyte (1,000,000,000,000 characters) in size; "1012" in the name refers to "10 to the power of 12". Major components included: * Mainframe-resident software to manage users and transfer data * Interface processor (IFP) - the hardware connection between the mainframe and the DBC/1012 * Ynet - a custom-built system interconnect that supported broadcast and sorting * Access module processor (AMP) - the unit of parallelism: includes microprocessor, disk drive, file system, and database software * System console and printer * TEQUEL (TEradata QUEry Language) - an extension of SQL The DBC/1012 was designed to scale up to 1024 Ynet interconnected processor-disk units. Rows of a

relation Relation or relations may refer to: General uses *International relations, the study of interconnection of politics, economics, and law on a global level *Interpersonal relationship, association or acquaintance between two or more people *Public ...

(table) were distributed by hashing on the primary

database index A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional writes and storage space to maintain the index data structure. Indexes are used to quickly locate data without ...

. The DBC/1012 used a 474 megabyte Winchester disk drive with an average seek time of 18 milliseconds. The disk drive was capable of transferring data at 1.9 MB/s although in practice the sustainable data rate was lower because the IO pattern tended towards random access and transfer lengths of 8 to 12 kilobytes. The processor cabinet was 60 inches high and 27 inches wide, weighed 450 pounds, and held up to 8 microprocessor units. The storage cabinet was 60 inches high and 27 inches wide, weighed 625 pounds, and held up to 4 disk storage units. The DBC/1012 preceded the advent of

redundant array of independent disks Raid, RAID or Raids may refer to: Attack * Raid (military), a sudden attack behind the enemy's lines without the intention of holding ground * Corporate raid, a type of hostile takeover in business * Panty raid, a prankish raid by male college ...

(RAID) technology, so data protection was provided by the "fallback" feature, which kept a logical copy of rows of a relation on different AMPs. The collection of AMPs that provided this protection for each other was called a

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Asteroid cluster, a small asteroid family * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study t ...

. A cluster could have from 2 to 16 AMPs. The product could be integrated with

optical disc drive In computing, an optical disc drive is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only r ...

s. There were at least four models, marketed through about 1993.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dbc 1012 Mainframe computers Teradata