Having reorganised its Unix, Windows NT and CTOS businesses into server and personal computer divisions, Unisys Corp appears to have straightened out its symmetric multiprocessing story too, planning to offer Intel Corp-built servers, taken OEM, as its first common Unix and NT line from next month, followed by home-grown all-Peripheral Component Interconnect bus technology beginning in the third quarter. Next month Unisys will announce one-to-four-way P6-ready Intel Extended Express servers with 100MHz Pentiums as the UN5400 Unix line. The Windows NT group will add the servers, running NT, to its Pathway series. The units come with four EISA, two Peripheral Component Interconnect, two shared slots and 512Kb cache, that will go to 1Mb later. The UN5400s come in below Unisys’s current P6-ready mid-range U6000 Series 500 Pentium symmetric multiprocessing boxes, which offer more expandability and up to 2Mb cache. The U6000/50 comes with one-to-five iAPX-86 processors on separate boards; the Model 80 has two-to-eight processors on dual-processor boards. Unisys’s 533Mbps Synchronous Coherent Multiprocessor bus supports mixed 60MHz, 80MHz, 90MHz, 100MHz Pentiums and future P6 arrangements in the same box. The servers currently use a 200Mbps split transaction input-output bus, based on the PCI chip set. But the company will migrate to pure PCI with the next revision of its system designs. Initially, Unisys will take the Model 80 to a 10-way configuration with first deliveries in June, when it will also take its first stab at clustering. Unisys will offer NT on the 50 and 80, but sees an extension of the PCI architecture due in the third quarter that will take the series from one processor to 12, and beyond, as the first symmetric multiprocessing vehicle for Unix and NT groups. Despite its own symmetric multiprocessing and clustering offerings pushing up into the reaches of its re-badged Sequent Computer Systems Inc Symmetry 5000s, Unisys says it remains committed to Sequent at the high end but admits that a reduced dependency on Sequent is a prudent course given the current spate of takeover speculation about the Beaverton, Oregon firm.
