Fujitsu ICL Computers has extended its teamserver range of Pentium Pro-based Unix and NT servers. The teamserver Mi M700i series uses Intel’s 200 MHz/512 KB cache Pentium Pro processor and is available initially in a one-to-four-way configuration but will be expandable to a six-way later this year, the company says. The Mi uses Fujitsu’s own motherboard chipset rather than Intel’s and this has enabled the six-way model. According to Jon Cutter, general manager of business programs at Fujitsu, the company is seeing a 1.4 uplift between the four-way and six-way configurations. The theoretical maximum is a 50% increase and we are managing 40%. This is significantly more than we expected, he said. The chipset is able to support six processors by freeing up the Pentium Pro’s bus through less interleaving and using EDO Enhanced Data Out memory, which is not supported on the Intel chipset. The Fujitsu chipset has increased buffering and caching and there are additional routes to memory for data transfers. The chipset is also being used by Compaq Computer Corp in its four- way Pentium Pro-based workstations and Fujitsu is currently debating whether to make it available to other vendors, says Cutter. The chipset provides two independent memory ports, thereby doubling the effective bandwidth. This results in lower memory access times and increased overall bus bandwidth giving improved multiprocessor scalability. The chipset also has two independent PCI buses thereby doubling the I/O bandwidth and increasing the PCI connectivity. The Mi models have six dedicated PCI and four EISA slots and up to nine Ultra SCSI disks in the cabinet, providing up to 81Gb of data storage. The Mi supports Windows NT server 4.0, Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s UnixWare 2.1 and OpenServer Release 5, Novell Inc’s Intranetware 4.11 and Citrix Winframe 1.6. The system ships next month.
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