Stratus Computer Inc will roll out its long-in-the-making Precision Architecture RISC-based fault-tolerant machines early next year. The Marlborough, Massachusetts-based company’s tie-up with Hewlett-Packard Co for the Precision Architecture CPU goes back to June 1992, and there’s been hardly a whisper on the hardware front since then. Stratus, now into its third generation of mainstream processors, will be hoping that it’s third time lucky, having picked only losers in the RISC microprocessor wars so far; it went from Motorola Inc’s 68020 to 68030s, jumping the 88000 boat mid-voyage for Intel Corp’s 80860, and has around 7,000 installations worldwide. The new systems will run its FTX fault-tolerant Unix System V.4 and the proprietary VOS operating system. Its current 80860 XA/R systems top out at six-ways but the Precision Architecture boxes will go further, but aren’t expected to be pitched into the scalable system market where players are fielding machines with tens or hundreds of processors. The company claims that with the Precision Architecture line it has all but eliminated bottlenecks; Stratus employs a tightly-coupled, shared memory architecture which achieves fault-tolerance by duplicating memory. The new systems will be sold alongside 80860s for some time, and come towards the end of a two-year effort that has seen Stratus attempt to redefine its business for the world of client-server computing, having already managed the decline of OEM business as a major revenue source. As it sees it, the problem of high availability has moved into new realms where customers no longer want just a fault-tolerant box – the technologies are well-established and available from a number of vendors – but are rightly demanding solutions to other problems such as network management and distributed processing too. Stratus has bought into that world with the acquisition of distributed software house Isis Distributed Systems Inc, securities software house TCAM Systems Inc and plans to spend more on other software and services providers. OEM sales accounted for 6% of its $513m 1993 business, down from 41% of the $343m it made up in 1989 when IBM Corp was still peddling Stratus machines – Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA and NEC Corp are its only top-line resellers now, although with Precsion Architecture machines, Hewlett-Packard might well figure too – at present, Hewlett takes 68040-based fault-tolerant HP 9000 Series 1200 machines OEM from Sequoia Systems Inc. Between 25% and 30% of Stratus business is Unix and it sees no end in sight for its VOS; its major FTX users are European phone companies.
