Compagnie des Machines Bull SA will stick with the High Availability Cluster Multi-Processing architecture for the foreseeable future, says Jacques Talbot, systems architecture manager of Bull’s Open System & Software division. He said he did not expect anything better to be invented in the next few years. Alain Couder, president of the division, claimed the company had experienced only three hours’ down-time in the last five years with the architecture. He added that the company was firmly planted in the symmetric multiprocessing camp and its plans were to fill the multiprocessing system with as many processors as possible and then cluster when you run out of steam with symmetric multiprocessing power. He said this was in line with the thinking of Hewlett-Packard Co, Silicon Graphics Inc, Digital Equipment Corp and Sequent Computer Systems Inc. On Inter-Serial Link, ISL, Bull’s answer to what it believes to be the throughput limitations of FDDI, Talbot said it could provide full duplex links between up to eight nodes, with no need for a central switch, as with FDDI, which is potential point of failure. It will be available when the Escala Powercluster server series gets above 48 processors before the end of next year. Dider Breton, vice-president of the division says the company’s ambition is to achieve 10% market share with the high-end symmetric multiprocessing Escala Powercluster systems (CI No 2,760) and Couder says the aim is to acheive this within the next three years.
