Tandem Computers Inc, Cupertino, California, is now into the third quarter of its OEM deal with MIPS Technologies Inc parent Silicon Graphics Inc, which is expected to be worth $100m over two years. It declined to be specific, but says the arrangement is going according to plan. Tandem sells Silicon Graphics R4400 Challenge servers under its own name as Network Resource systems in its R3000-based Integrity Unix line, plus workstations carrying the Silicon Graphics logo where required. Tandem says it will take Silicon Graphics’s R4600 systems, but has not yet decided on the newest R8000 Power Challenges. Whether Silicon Graphics machines will fully supplant the Integrity line is unclear – Tandem Unix systems achieve fault-tolerance by the voting method in which the system components are triplicated. However, one indication may lie in Tandem’s planned announcement of high-availability and switching hardware and software technologies for Silicon Graphics systems.
