For the selected SAS procedures, internal modifications have been made to take advantage of threads in order to parallelize some or all of the computationally intensive portions of the procedures and reduce the real time of execution. In addition, the appropriate hardware configuration can increase the effective transfer rate of data into the procedures to also help minimize overall execution time.
The procedures that have been modified so far in SAS 9 to take advantage of SMP hardware include:
The SPD Engine and several of the SAS/ACCESS engines support parallel read capabilities in SAS 9. With the appropriate hardware configuration, these engines can perform parallel partition reads to deliver more MB/sec to SAS procedures.
It is important to note that performance gains on SMP machines with these procedures are not limited to SPD Engine data sources. Assuming your hardware provides sufficient I/O bandwidth, the threading changes incorporated into these procedures will scale against standard base data sets. Our testing of these procedures using existing base data sets has shown excellent scalability, especially on machines that provide hardware striping.
We at SAS have created the Scalability Community to make you aware of the connectivity and scalability features and enhancements that you can leverage for your SAS installation. The success of this community depends on you. Send electronic mail to scalability@sas.com with your comments, requirements, and suggestions.