And still Oracle Corp’s dance of the 97 veils over its Network Computer goes on: the company purportedly revealed 15 licensees of the basic design late Wednesday, but the only names we could glean were Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA, Acorn Computer Group Plc, Nokia Oy, Acer Inc, Tatung Co Ltd, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, Funai Ltd, with SunRiver Data Systems Inc the only US company revealed so far. As well as those eight, and another seven, Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison says some other big-name manufacturers may be announced when he shares a platform with Sun Microsystems Inc and IBM Corp on Monday to announce the technical specifications for Network Computers the three have agreed. Netscape Communications Corp is expected to be there to turn the trio into a quartet. The Oracle specifications cover a range of devices from two-way pagers through television set-top boxes, Personal Digital Assistants, smart phones and thin client computers. ARM RISC licensee Cirrus Logic Inc, which is already making application- specific Asynchronous Transfer Mode variants of the ARM for desktop Asynchronous Mode specialist Advanced Telecommunications Modules Ltd of Cambridge, is fabricating the 32MHz ARM RISC in the thin client Network Computer specification – which covers a machine with built- in display, Type 3 PC Card slot, nickel-metal-hydride battery and ports to connect a television set or peripherals. Other technology partners producing components or software for the things include Digital Equipment Corp, Corel Corp and Motorola Inc, Ellison says, and there are apparently at least another four of those. Oracle is creating a subsidiary called Network Computing Inc to market the Network Computer software. The specification is not tied to the ARM RISC – Sun is expected to use a baby Sparc – and Oracle is also doing a version of the Network Computer software for Intel Corp iAPX-86 microprocessors, which may well be what IBM goes for. Ellison is quoted as saying he expects the most common chip used to be the Pentium. We’re trying to get our Intel software out as fast as our ARM software, he says. The proposed standard, he predicts, will encourage companies to build Network Computer-type technology into telephones, televisions, hand-held computers and cheapo computers for schools – and that low-cost electronic mail will drive consumer sales and change the way that most people communicate.
