Santa Cruz Operation Inc is now shipping a version of its UnixWare 7 operating system and development kit to OEMs and ISVs with access to Intel Corp’s Merced emulator. It will enable them to develop 64-bit applications and systems to coincide with Merced’s introduction. Oracle has one, but it claimed not to know who else has. SCO says its UnixWare build level 2 is a 64-bit UnixWare kernel that utilizes Merced’s 64-bit memory addressing and file access. The IA-64 dynamic library linking is implemented. A software development kit for creating IA-64 applications in the simulator is available. It will also offer an SDK for ISVs to take advantage of some IA-64’s performance – but not scaling – without writing vanilla 64-bit code. Meantime SCO says the DataCenter version of UnixWare 7 created using input from its primary backers Compaq, Data General, ICL, Intel and Unisys will be available by mid-1999. It couldn’t tell us whether the cut supports ccNUMA, one of the primary reasons for its creation, or what other enterprise features the partners have contributed.
