Commenting on Microprocessor Report’s comment that Sun Microsystems Inc ships more units than Data General Corp’s entire installed Unix base every month (CI No 2,114), the AViiON-builder observes that most of its 20,000 systems shipped are servers, whereas most of Sun’s sales are workstations; the point the Report was stressing was that Data General is the sole surviving mainstream system manufacturer using the Motorola Inc 88000 RISC series and the figures were intended to point out the increasing marginality – and some would say unimportance – of the 88000 when system shipments are taken into consideration; Data General of course says that it wrote its software in such a way that it can simply pick up its entire Unix environment and plonk it down on another RISC – just like that.
