Hewlett-Packard duly unveiled its eight-way Windows NT server as the NetServer LXr Pro8 last night, claiming it will have beaten rivals such as IBM, Compaq and DEC to market by several months when the system ships next month (CI No 3,077). The server implements Axil Computer Inc’s eight-way Adaptive Memory Crossbar technology and will cost from $30,000 with two 200MHz Pentium Pro CPUs and 1Mb cache on a board. HP is putting a lot of marketing muscle behind the eight-way although it remains to be seen how big the market will be given NT itself is barely fit for use on four-way systems. HP itself thinks the LXr Pro8 will be most popular as a four-way. Intel Corp originally shunned the eight- way market space figuring there’d be no volume, but recently acquired iAPX-86 multi-processing pioneer Corollary Inc to cover itself. While there have been suggestions HP might adopt a different interconnect for its eight-way Pentium II requirement, it’s unlikely to HP would want to into step with its chief competitor Compaq, which is to use the Corollary technology in its own eight-ways due next year. Corollary itself is supposedly in the process of acquiring NCR Corp’s OctaScale unit which already offers an eight-way NT technology – evidently not what HP recognizes as a serious competition – while Data General Corp, presumably even less of a threat, also uses Hyundai Electronics America unit Axil’s work. NEC Corp is doing its own eight-way NT and DEC is to rebadge NCR’s OctaScale system as its Prioris 9000.
