Azul Systems
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2002 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, United States |
| Key people | Scott Sellers, CEO, President, and Co-Founder Shyam Pillalamarri, Vice President of Engineering, Co-Founder |
| Industry | Diversified computer systems |
| Products | Computer servers |
| Website | http://www.azulsystems.com/ |
Azul Systems, Inc., a privately held company, manufactures computer appliances for executing Java-based applications. Founded in March 2002, Azul Systems is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in Slough, United Kingdom; Tokyo, Japan and Bangalore, India.[1]
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[edit] Products
Azul produces a Java Compute Appliance (JCA) which is designed to massively scale up the usable compute resources available to Java applications. A proxy Java Virtual Machine (JVM) installed on an existing system will transparently redeploy Java applications to the Azul appliance, the latest version of which, the Vega 3, can contain up to 864 processor cores and 768 GB of memory.[2] Re-hosting a resource-limited Java application on a JCA can be done without changing the existing application and provides an alternative to traditional scalability architectures which deploy multiple application instances on many smaller commodity systems to offload the computational responsibilities of the original server.[3]
By integrating the hardware, kernel and JVM components within this appliance, Azul is targeting two major limitations on Java application scalability. It addresses the first, large grained locking, with a technology called Optimistic Thread Concurrency (OTC)[4], that attempts to substantially increase the parallelism of multi-threaded Java applications, which as Amdahl's Law predicts, is particularly important for Azul's Vega systems, which generally contain hundreds of available CPUs.
The second is Pauseless Garbage Collection (Pauseless-GC), which exploits hardware extensions to allow a Java application executing on a Vega system to directly utilize 100 to 200 GB of memory without suffering significant pausing, an increase of two orders of magnitude over competing platforms.[5][6][7] Access to this level of available memory would reduce the need for administrators to schedule controlled application re-starts to prevent garbage collection pauses from manifesting themselves, and Azul offers a published guarantee that a multi-threaded Java application will improve its performance and response times significantly when transparently rehosted on its appliance.[8]
[edit] Company history
Azul Systems was founded by Scott Sellers (now President & CEO), Shyam Pillalamarri (VP of Engineering), and Gil Tene (CTO). The first compute appliances, offered in April 2005, were the 960, 1920 and 3840, consisting of 96, 192 and 384 processor cores, respectively.[9]
Stephen DeWitt previously held the position of CEO.[10]
[edit] Legal issues
Azul Systems was approached in 2005 by Sun Microsystems, who offered a licensing deal for patents it claimed Azul had violated.[11] In March, 2006, Azul Systems sued Sun Microsystems, asking a U.S. District Court in northern California to rule on the issue of patent infringement. In May 2006, Sun Microsystems sued Azul Systems in federal court in San Jose, CA, claiming patent infringement and violation of a non-competitive agreement with former Azul CEO, Stephen DeWitt, also a former Sun employee. Both parties agreed to the terms of an undisclosed settlement in June 2007 prior to either suit going to trial.[12]
[edit] Finances
Based on public filings[13], Azul has raised more than $200M in financing to date.
| Date | Type | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 2003-01-22 | Series A | $7,000,000 |
| 2003-03-04 | Series A | $1,027,162 |
| 2003-05-29 | Series B | $13,572,021 |
| 2004-05-19 | Series C | $34,999,994 |
| 2005-02-16 | Series D | $29,473,400 |
| 2006-01-13 | Series E | $42,189,628 |
| 2007-05-31 | Bridge | $10,016,758 |
| 2007-08-30 | Series F | $40,552,043 |
| 2007-12-04 | Series F | $18,557,590 |
| 2008-11-26 | Series 2 | $9,408,124 |
Major investors include Accel Partners, Austin Ventures, Credit Suisse, Meritech Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Velocity Interactive Group, and Worldview Technology Partners.[14] ComVentures and JVax Investment Group have also invested in Azul.[15]
[edit] Production as of 2009
Azul Systems released the Vega 3 7300 Series in May 2008. The 7300 series contains up to 864 processing cores with 768 GB of memory.[16]
Azul Systems released the Vega 2 7200 Series, in June 2007. The 7200 series contains up to 768 processing cores on 16 processor chips with 768 GB of memory. Azul designed the 48 core Vega 2 processor chip. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) fabricated the Vega 2 processor.[17] Notable companies utilizing the 7200 series include Credit Suisse, Wachovia, British Telecom, and TransUnion.
[edit] References
- ^ "Company Locations". Azul Systems. http://www.azulsystems.com/company/location.htm.
- ^ Azul Compute Appliance - Azul Product Page
- ^ High Availability Architectures: Technology Trends - TechITEasy, November 9, 2007
- ^ Optimistic Thread Concurrency - Breaking the Scale Barrier - OTC Whitepaper
- ^ Performance Considerations in Concurrent Garbage-Collected Systems- 2008 JavaOne Presentation
- ^ 2GB Java Memory Limits- ServerSide Discussions
- ^ GC Tuning- Sun JVM Tuning Guide
- ^ Azul 5-50 Performance Guarantee- Azul 5-50 Guarantee Definitions
- ^ Azul takes wraps off Java compute appliance - NetworkWorld.com, 04/18/05
- ^ DeWitt, Stephen (2003) (PDF), Commission of Corporations, State of California, Notice of Transaction Pursuant to Corporations Code 25102(f), San Francisco: California Department of Corporations, http://134.186.208.228/caleasi/PDFDocs/003709994.PDF
- ^ Azul CEO accuses Sun of "exorbitant" licensing demands – CBR, 16th March 2006
- ^ Sun Microsystems Settle Patent Disputes With Azul - InformationWeek, June 20, 2007
- ^ Cal-EASI Database
- ^ "Azul Systems Investors". Azul Systems. http://www.azulsystems.com/company/investors.htm.
- ^ "Azul Financing Press Release". Azul Systems. http://www.azulsystems.com/press/091307_40m_financing.htm.
- ^ "Azul Compute Appliances". Azul Systems. http://www.azulsystems.com/products/compute_appliance.htm. Retrieved 2008-05-23.
- ^ Java-Crunching Monsters – The Chiplist, June 14, 2007
[edit] External links
- Azul Systems - Official site.
- Azul Launches Vega 2 Devices – Byte and Switch, June 14, 2007
- Butler Review of Azul's Compute Appliance - Technology Audit
