Concurrent Computer Corp has boosted the power of its real-time Unix system range with new hardware based on the MIPS R3000 RISC processor, which the firm has been working on for well over a year (CI No 1,126). Concurrent’s Series 8000 multi-processors are claimed to achieve a four-fold reduction in context switch times over the current Motorola 68030-based real-time Unix machines from the Masscomp side of the company. The company is buying in boards from Silicon Graphics, each with two 25MHz R3000 chips and two R3010 floating point co-processors: up to four boards can be added for a top-end, eight-CPU configuration. A single-CPU version is also available at the bottom end. Around the boards Concurrent has added dual cacheing, a proprietary 64 Mbyte-per-second memory bus and 40Mbyte-per-second input-output bus with support for VMEbus slots. The operating system is RTU Unix Version 6.0, based on Unix System V.3 and including multi-processing support, frequency-based scheduling and disk mirroring, giving a measure of fault-tolerance. X Window and OSF/Motif are supported, and the standard databases are being implemented. There are three models, covering performance of 20 MIPS to 160 MIPS: the single slot, single or dual processor 8300 pedestal model with 8Mb to 64Mb memory, starting at UKP45,000; the rack-mounted six to 12 slot 8400, also single or dual processor, from UKP46,000; and the top-end 8500, supporting up to four dual processor boards and two 64Mb ECC memory boards, with up to 21 VMEbus slots, starting at UKP75,000. The 8300 and 8500 ship from June, while the 8400 is ready in April. Aimed at real-time transaction processing, signal analysis, simulation, image processing and measurement and control, the series 8000s are positioned as network servers and come in above the Concurrent (Masscomp) 5000 and 6000 68000 family lines. With context switching times in the hundred microsecond range, the new line still achieves only half the real-time performance of Concurrent’s proprietary Series 3200 machines running OS/32, but the with faster CPUs from MIPS, Concurrent sees equal performance by year-end: translation tools between the two ranges are under development.
