Schooner Information Technology, a start-up based in Menlo Park, California, emerged from stealth mode and unveiled two data access solutions for cloud computing datacenters: the Schooner Appliance for MySQL Enterprise and the Schooner Appliance for Memcached. 
Schooner's data access appliances leverage a system architecture that integrates enterprise-class flash memory, Intel Nehalem multi-core processors, low-latency interconnect, and optimized data access and caching applications. The Schooner Operating Environment manages all system resources, including threads, cores, interconnect, DRAM, and flash memory, as well as optimizing key performance metrics, including transactions/sec/watt, transactions/sec/core, and transactions/sec/$.
The company said this level of integration yields dramatic improvements over traditional servers, including eight times higher performance, one-eighth the power and space requirements and 60 percent lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
Schooner appliances are currently in customer trials and will be available for volume shipment in the third quarter of 2009.
Schooner Information Technology is collaborating with IBM to provide fully integrated data access appliances. The Schooner platform uses IBM System x server technology.
http://www.schoonerinfotech.com
- Schooner Information Technology was co-founded by Dr. John Busch (previously a research director of computer system architecture and analysis at Sun Microsystems laboratories from 1999 through 2006) and Dr. Tom McWilliams, who previously founded three successful start-ups. His most recent company, PathScale, developed a low-latency, high bandwidth InfiniBand system interconnect, and was acquired by QLogic in 2006. Prior to founding PathScale, from 1996 to 2001 Dr. McWilliams served as a distinguished engineer and principal investigator at Sun Microsystems, working on server architecture and advanced CAD tools. From 1993 to 1996, he was a director in the MIPS division of Silicon Graphics.
