October: Unix System Labs is dealt into the ACE hand as members of the Advanced RISC Computing initiative agree to develop interfaces that will enable Unix System V.4 and OSF/1 applications to run under Open Desktop. Galaxy, Sun Microsystems Inc’s new series of one-to-four CPU, asymmetric multi-processing servers disappoint: they use 40MHz Cypress Semiconductor Sparcs and not the superscalar Viking part under development at Texas Instruments, which is delayed until 1992. MIPS announces the 64-bit R4000 RISC that the Advanced Computing Environment is betting its Unix hand on: there are three versions, for low-end, high-performance and multi-processing systems, going from 40 to 60 SPECmarks. Apple and IBM unveil two joint ventures: Taligent for the object-oriented system environment and Kaleida for multi-media technologies. Cray Research says it will buy bankrupt Floating Point Systems. Hitachi Data Systems wins the largest X-terminal order so far: 60,000 units worth $70m as part of a $1,600m US army contract awarded to Boeing Co. Unix System Labs and Novell announce a distribution agreement and plan a joint venture company to handle Destiny, Unix Labs’s cut-down version of Unix for the desktop. Unix Labs releases multi-processing System V.4 MP. The Open Software Foundation will give up its X/Open board seat at the end of the year pleading poverty, but it may decide to initiate own branding scheme. DEC previews $5,000 Maxine ACE station at Comdex.
November: At Unix Expo in New York, Unix System Labs shows off its Destiny, a modularised Unix for the desktop, designed for computers with a minimum configuration of 4Mb RAM and 60Mb disk. The Object Management Group – OMG – reveals its ORB Object Request Broker specification as a combination of the competing submissions. Hewlett-Packard shows the Object Request Broker working the very next day, at the Unix Expo show. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs slams the Object Management Group’s efforts, saying that his NeXT company will have its own system, Remote Object, within six months. A $70m loss for the quarter seals the fate of Compaq Computer Corp president and co-founder Rod Canion: he’s replaced by German-born Eckhard Pfeiffer. Prime Computer (ravaged by take-over defence and saddled with intolerable debt by over-optimistic money manipulators), Nokia Data (bought by ICL) and AT&T (now incorporating NCR) are also to withdraw from the X/Open board. Santa Cruz Operation lays off 10% of its workforce and may pull the plug on Open Desktop for MIPS Computer Systems RISCs. Cray withdraws its offer for Floating Point Systems. Unix Labs chief executive Larry Dooling is replaced by vice-president for sales and marketing Roel Pieper: it takes a $1m stake in French micro-kernel house Chorus Systemes. Motorola’s next-generation RISC, the 64-bit 88110 hits 63 SPECmarks. Stardent Computer – nee Ardent nee Stellar throws in the towel. Intergraph launches next-generation C400 Clipper RISC workstations and servers, and says that it plans OSF/1 by the end of 1992. Intel launches the Paragon XP/S parallel supercomputer, with 66 to 4,000 80860 RISCs, which delivers up to 300 GFLOPS running Mach and OSF/1. Now Cray says that it will buy Floating Point Systems. DEC has a 64-bit implementation of OSF/1 running on its next-generation Alpha RISC, which is touted at 100 SPECmarks. DEC will use Alpha in everything from laptops to supercomputers, and Cray says that it wants to use the part in a parallel supercomputer too. After a secret run-off, Sequent Computer Systems eschews MIPS RISC in favour of Intel’s forthcoming 80586. Sanyo Electric launches the first Unix-based pen computer. Some 20,000 more jobs are to go at IBM, which now employs 350,000, people, down from a peak of 407,000 in 1986: from Austin it says it plans to offer everything from a colour laptop to a 16-CPU, 64-bit multi-processor in its RS/6000 Unix family. December: the Unix workstation market shows its first ever quarter-on-quarter decline: shipments by the top six vendors are down 7.9% on average, though Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics bu
ck the trend. However, Unix Labs says it sold 1.2m units of Unix this year, 35% up on 1990. DEC bites back at Hewlett’s Snakes with new ACE-compatible DECstations, starting at GBP3,000 for the 16.3 SPECmarked Maxine. IBM forms separate companies for storage devices, printers and recruitment – first steps towards a promised radical restructuring. AT&T’s NCR wins agreement to acquire back-end parallel database engine company Teradata Corp, for $520m. Novell underlines its pivotal industry role as it wins Hewlett-Packard and Stratus Computer Inc over to NetWare – NeXT, Data General and AT&T may follow – and reveals Univel, the joint venture with Unix Labs, in which it holds a majority 55% stake. After more than a year on the market, UK Unix office automation firm Uniplex is snapped up by IBM specialist, IMI Computing Ltd. Hewlett-Packard’s low-end Snake the 50 SPECmark Bushmaster – has been around for six months, but won’t ship till next March. A consortium, which includes support from the Israeli government, is being put together to acquire Unisys. The Advanced Computing Environment looks less and less convincing as DEC takes over responsibility for Open Desktop on the MIPS Computer Systems RISC: Santa Cruz Operation says that Open Desktop for ACE-Intel may not be out till 1993. Everything object-oriented threatens to bore the pants off everyone in the New Year.
