SAIC in the USA upgrades FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System with SGI superserversMountain View 30 January 2001 Science Applications International (SAIC) has installed two eight-processor SGI 2000 series servers to power the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which helps prevent the transfer of handguns and long guns from licensed gun dealers to felons and other individuals prohibited by US law. In addition, two 16-processor SGI Origin 3000 series systems will be installed this summer as part of the FBI's upgrade strategy for NICS.
NICS, used by more than 60,000 federally licensed firearms dealers
nationwide to screen prospective purchasers, was developed by SAIC for the
FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg, W.V. In
1993, congress mandated the creation of NICS under the Brady Handgun Violence
Prevention Act to implement instant background checks on those trying to buy
handguns and long guns. The system reviews criminal records and other
prohibiting data to determine whether federally licensed firearms dealers can
legally transfer a gun to a prospective purchaser.
Two eight-processor SGI 2000 series servers, which act as backups to each
other, manage the NICS central database of noncriminal federal prohibiting
records and tap into two FBI databases -- the National Crime Information
Center and the Interstate Identification Index -- to identify people
prohibited from buying firearms. Besides those with criminal convictions, NICS
helps disqualify prospective purchasers who have received dishonorable
discharges from the armed forces, have been committed to mental institutions,
are illegal aliens or have renounced their U.S. citizenship.
NICS first went online in November 1998 and routinely handles tens of
thousands of gun applications per day that require information on a
purchaser's background. Although each background check searches several
databases with tens of millions of criminal records on file, NICS responds in
well under 30 seconds on most inquiries from federally licensed firearms
sellers.
The two new SGI 2000 series servers replace an eight-processor SGI(TM)
Challenge server that used to power NICS. In addition, two 16-processor
SGI Origin 3000 series systems will be installed this summer as part
of the FBI's upgrade strategy for NICS. The FBI recently upgraded NICS from an
Oracle7 to an Oracle8 database.
The SGI Origin server family is used for high-performance, computationally
intensive applications in business, government and the scientific and
technical communities. Use of SGI(TM) systems running MIPS(R) processors,
combined with its IRIX operating system and SGI NUMA architecture in a
64-bit scalable server environment, allows the SGI Origin family to scale to
thousands of processors, providing the opportunity to seamlessly grow as
customer requirements demand.
NICS runs on the SGI IRIX 6.5 operating system, a fifth-generation UNIX(R)
operating system and one of the most important and mature UNIX operating
system releases in the industry. IRIX 6.5 is characterized by a rich set of
scalability, big data management, real-time 3D visualization enhancements and
middleware features, along with an improved release process for increased
robustness and stability for broader server and workstation deployment.
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