Definition of SPU

Answer

The Snippet Processing Unit (SPU) is the basic unit of processing and storage in the NPS.

Each SPU is basically a standalone microcomputer consisting of a CPU, logic processors, memory, and disk storage. The SPU is an intelligent disk storage device; it has logic to quickly search for information and only return the matching results of the portions of the data that are saved on its disk. 

An NPS system has many SPUs; for example, there are up to 56 in the NPS model 10500 and up to 896 in the NPS model 10800. User database tables are distributed across all of the SPUs to allow for parallel query processing. 

Each SPU is responsible for managing a portion of your database and tables (called a primary partition), as well as for maintaining a copy of another SPU’s primary partition (called a mirror partition). If an SPU should fail, the mirror partition is used to create a new primary partition on a standby SPU within the system, which will then take the place of the failed SPU.