Compagnie des Machines Bull SA will unveil its Mississippi clustering technology on September 28, today’s Unigram.X reports. Initially, Mississippi will link four PowerPC 601 symmetric multiprocessing Escalas over Fibre Distributed Data Interface links topped with job scheduling, configuration management and other software borrowed from the GCOS mainframe side of its house. Eight-way configurations will be supported from the first quarter of next year with the next-generation ISL interconnect due in the second half, starting with a 64-way link. As well as support for IBM Corp’s AIX-based HACMP high-availability clustering software, Bull will announce relationships for Oracle Corp’s Oracle Parallel Server and Informix Software Inc’s promised Online Extended Parallel Server 8.0. IBM is not taking Mississippi for its RS/6000s: Bull claims the Austin, Texas-based Unix people are interested but are hog-tied by high-end RS/6000 development work now handed down by the company’s Kingston, New York development facility. Bull says it has got working alpha versions of the PCI bus technology that will bring Windows NT, Solaris and other operating systems onto its currently AIX and Micro Channel Architecture-only Escalas, and on the variants supplied by Motorola Inc and others. Bull’s Zenith Data Systems, which already markets low-end Motorola-based ZPower boxes, is expected to invest more heavily in PowerPC development now that Motorola has a 10% holding in the French parent company. It will be the conduit for all of the two companies’ low-end, indirect PowerPC systems business. Bull says it has got PowerPC 620 samples up and running in its labs and still expects products by mid-1996.
