• Seven years ago, the SAS Research and Development (R&D) Build Teams created “Build Bubbles” (IT compile environments established for the exclusive use of developers creating SAS software) to help the company’s developers more easily and efficiently create applications. Years later the development team changed—more developers working from around the world creating more complex applications—and the SAS R&D team needed an infrastructure that could keep pace.

• Testing revealed that the AMD Opteron™ processor provided excellent price/performance and energy efficiencies.
• As such, the SAS Build Bubbles and supporting systems were built on a mix of HP and Sun servers and blade servers—all powered by the AMD Opteron processor.

• The AMD Opteron processor ran SAS applications substantially faster than the previous system, and helped compile the applications in a fraction of the time.
• The efficiencies of the AMD Opteron processor allowed SAS to consolidate its servers to only a fraction of their prior rack space. “The less power the AMD Opteron processor-based servers draw, the more we can cram into the same footprint, helping us save money on servers, power and cooling, and data center space,” SAS Research and Development IT Director Leon Robbins said.
• Due to AMD’s ongoing innovation leadership and long-term product roadmap, Robbins and team are eagerly awaiting AMD’s quad-core offering.

The SAS mission is to empower organizations around the world with superior software, solutions and services that give them THE POWER TO KNOW®, providing a valued competitive weapon in business decision making.

Incorporated in 1976, SAS is one of the world's largest privately held software companies with 10,000 employees in more than 400 offices spanning the globe.

SAS is a leader in business intelligence software and services. Customers at 40,000 sites use SAS software to improve performance through insight into vast amounts of data, which helps them achieve faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products. SAS offers leading data integration, intelligence storage, advanced analytics and traditional business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform.

In 2005, SAS continued its unbroken track record of revenue growth and profitability with overall revenue of $1.9 billion. SAS also invested 24 percent of revenues into research and development—significantly higher than the average investment of many large software companies—to support new development initiatives.

As part of a leading Business Intelligence (BI) vendor, the SAS application development team is critical to the company’s success. The company’s applications are extremely complex, dealing with tens of millions of floating-point intensive lines of code. Seven years ago, to help these developers more easily and efficiently create these applications, the SAS Research and Development (R&D) Build Team created “Build Bubbles”—IT environments exclusively leveraged by the application development team. The architectures were based on the AMD Athlon™ processor.

Since then, the SAS application development environment experienced major changes that mapped to impressive company growth. As SAS revenue readily increased, so did demand for newer applications and therefore the development team expanded. R&D staff grew from 800 to 1400 developers, requiring more processing power to support the increased usage of the Build Bubbles. The team also expanded geographically: initially, most developers worked from the company’s North Carolina office but the new team worked from various places around the globe. Therefore, availability and reliability needed to be 100 percent as developers were accessing the Build Bubbles 24x7. The team also began creating customer-demanded Java applications, different from the original C language-based SAS application. As Java is a resource-intensive development language, creating the new applications required more memory than the C-based applications, another factor driving a change in the Build Bubbles’ infrastructures.

“As a private company, we needed to keep costs to a minimum. But the changes within the development team—more developers working longer hours creating more complex applications—demanded changes in the infrastructures to address the new challenges,” said SAS Research and Development IT Director Leon Robbins.

As the initial Build Bubbles were based on previous AMD technologies, SAS was inherently familiar with the company’s strengths. But with new advancements made by AMD and competitors, SAS conducted testing; and the results proved to SAS that the AMD Opteron™ processor delivered exceptional price/performance and energy efficiencies.

As such, the Build Bubbles and supporting systems were built on a mix of HP and Sun servers and blade servers—all powered by the AMD Opteron processor. The system is a grid environment so SAS can cross-compile all operating systems on homogenous equipment without fear that a failure of a few systems would shut down the Build Bubbles entirely.

• 90 single socket dual-core servers (AMD Opteron 200 Series processors)
• 20 dual socket dual-core servers (AMD Opteron 800 Series processors)

The company also deployed 50 AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant® BL465c and BL685c blade servers to support its annual Global User Forum.

The AMD Opteron processor helped SAS realize significant cost and performance advantages. “We run numerous platforms because our applications support nine different operating systems, but for R&D Build Systems we run on the AMD Opteron processor because of its excellent price/performance,” said Robbins. “AMD has an outstanding CPU to memory interface for exceptional system performance while also being extremely energy efficient. This lets us run a tight ship and helps ensure our applications get to market on time and on budget.”

Robbins elaborated on the energy efficiencies of the AMD Opteron processor: “The energy efficiencies of the AMD Opteron processor alone have been extremely helpful. We were able to consolidate to only a fraction of our prior number of racks while planning for 1½ kilowatts to eight kilowatts total power draw per AMD-based rack,” he said. “The less power the AMD Opteron processor-based servers draw, the more we can cram into the same footprint, helping us save money on servers, power and cooling, and data center space.”

SAS also experienced a dramatic performance improvement. According to Robbins, SAS software applications ran substantially faster on the AMD Opteron processor. Also, in terms of compiling, the AMD64-based systems are able to crunch several million lines of code very quickly versus its previous system.

Additionally, the company is beginning to deploy VMware® virtual infrastructure. The next version of its applications will run on the software, but the company is also embarking on an internal virtualization strategy. At press time, SAS was beginning to experiment with AMD Opteron processor-powered VMware virtual infrastructure.

Due to the success of the AMD Opteron processor implementation and continued product roadmap communication from the company, Robbins plans to continue to use AMD64 technology in future endeavors. “AMD does a good job of keeping us apprised of its product pipeline, assisting us in long-term planning,” he said. “As such we are eagerly awaiting AMD’s quad-core offerings: we will adopt as quickly and as many as we can.”

“We run numerous platforms because our applications support nine different operating systems, but for R&D [research and development] Build Systems we run on the AMD Opteron™ processor because of its excellent price/performance. AMD has an outstanding CPU to memory interface for exceptional system performance while also being extremely energy efficient. This lets us run a tight ship and helps ensure our applications get to market on time and on budget.”—Leon Robbins, research and development manager, SAS

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets. AMD is dedicated to driving open innovation, choice and industry growth by delivering superior customer-centric solutions that empower consumers and businesses worldwide. For more information, visit www.amd.com.

© 2007 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. SAS and The Power to Know are registered trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.