Compagnie des Machines Bull has gone to 64 bit across the range of its Escala SMP servers, the RL, E, T, D and EPC models. Bull, admitting that it is late to market is pushing the enterprise applications of the PowerPC-based boxes. It reiterated the extension of its OEM agreement with IBM Corp (CI No 3,435), and is using the 64 bit PowerPC RS64-1 chip and AIX Unix for the new boxes. Keen to highlight the enterprise side, Bull also talked up its partnership with EMC Corp. Claiming that before it did not have the right system or the right fibre channel to cater to enterprise storage needs, a situation the company now claims has been rectified by its FC-AL adapter. The French company says that the Escala RL479 12 way system offers double the performance of its predecessor and says that the next generation 24-way system, will offer triple to performance again. That’s because Bull expects that these systems will be running on 1,000MHz IBM copper chips. Bull says that it has started controlled delivery of the new systems, with a RL470 entry-level 4 way system costing $80,000.
