With the MIPS Technologies Inc architecture set to run out of steam as a mainstream computer system CPU after a few more turns of the screw, companies which still use MIPS as a system engine are scrambling to re-position themselves. Siemens Nixdorf Informationssystemes AG will use the opportunity to refocus its Siemens Pyramid Information Systems Inc unit and more clearly define its Intel Corp-oriented future, on or around April 27th. For some time now the Paderborner’s bosses have expressed undisguised frustration with the acquisition of the former Pyramid Technology Corp, whose high-end MPP and ccNUMA Unix servers use MIPS RISCs. When SNI bought Pyramid in March 1995, the German company was hoping to gain a valuable foothold in Silicon Valley and a technology and customer base from which it could begin to penetrate international markets. It was to have been a key piece of the company’s global strategy. But three years on, the deal seems to have produced little more than acrimony between the two companies. SNI’s chief executive Gerhard Schulmeyer doesn’t think the acquisition has been a success while CTO Peter Page says Pyramid was simply too small for what SNI had hoped to achieve. It wants to do one-third of its business in Germany, one-third in the rest of Europe, and one-third in the Americas and Asia-Pacific. Today German sales remain 60% of SNI’s business. See Barbed Wire section for more details on SNI’s global strategy.
