Following its letter of intent to give an OEM order to NeTpower Inc for its Windows NT servers and workstations (CI No 2,709), Tandem Computers Inc came out with classic tease yesterday, saying that it had also signed a letter of intent with an unidentified major computer company for joint development and manufacture of servers for the Windows NT the market, adding that it plans a formal announcement next quarter.It is not clear whether we are looking at NT on R-series RISC or iAPX-86 here (and it could conceivably be PowerPC or Alpha too) but given the NeTpower deal, iAPX-86 may be the better bet, in which case Compaq Computer Corp’s protracted mutterings about fault-tolerance could point the finger in that direction. If it’s R-series, Silicon Graphics Inc, which already has ties with Tandem, and MIPS Technologies Inc licensees NEC Corp and Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG fit the bill. If we are talking PowerPC, Motorola Inc and Compagnie des Machines Bull SA are the likely candidates.
