Before I had my morning cup of coffee, I found an email message with the subject “ParAccel ADVISORY” sitting in my mail box. Now, I’m not exactly sure why I got this message from Renee Deger of GlobalFluency so my first suspicion was that this was a scam and that someone in Nigeria would be giving me a million dollars if I did something.
But, I was disappointed. Renee Deger is not a Nigerian bank tycoon who will make me rich. In fact, ParAccel’s own blog indicates that their 30TB results have been challenged.
We wanted you to hear it from us first. Our TPC-H Benchmark for performance and price-performance at the 30-terabyte scale was taken down following a challenge by one of our competitors and a review by the TPC. We executed this benchmark in collaboration with Sun and under the watch of a highly qualified and experienced auditor. Although it has been around for many years, the TPC-H specification is still subject to interpretation, and our interpretation of some of the points raised was not accepted by the TPC review board.
None of these items impacts our actual performance, which is still the best in the industry. We will rerun the benchmark at our earliest opportunity according to the interpretations set forth by the TPC review board. We remain committed to the organization, as outlined in a blog post by Barry Zane, our CTO, here: http://paraccel.com/data_warehouse_blog/?p=74#more-74.
Please see the company blog for a post by David Steinhoff in the office of the CTO for further info: http://paraccel.com/data_warehouse_blog/?p=104#more-104
I read David Steinhoff’s blog as well. He writes
This last week, our June 2009 30TB results were challenged and found to be in violation of certain TPC rules. Accordingly, our results will soon be taken down from the TPC website.
We published our results in good faith. We used our standard, customer available database to run the benchmark (we wanted the benchmark to reflect the incredible performance our customers receive). However, the body of TPC rules is complex and undergoes constant interpretation; we are still relatively new to the benchmark game and are still learning, and we made some mistakes.
While we cannot get into the details of the challenges to our results (TPC proceedings are confidential and we would be in violation if we did), we can state with confidence that our query performance was in no way enhanced by the items that were challenged.
We can also say with confidence that we will publish again, soon.
Now, some competitor or competitor loyalist may try to make more of this than there is … we all know there is the risk of tabloid frenzy around any adversity in a society with free speech … and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
It is unfortunate that the proceedings are confidential and cannot be shared. I hope you republish your results at 30TB.
Contrary to some a long list of pundits, I believe that these benchmarks have an important place in the marketing of a product and its capabilities.
I reiterate what I said in a previous blog post
ParAccel’s solution is based on high-performance trilithium crystals. (Note: I don’t know why this wasn’t disclosed in the full disclosure report).
I hope the challenge was not about the trilithium crystals and the fact that you didn’t disclose it in the full disclosure report.
Hype Cycles 