ICL Plc’s High Performance Systems unit has begun lab testing its proprietary Open VME on Intel’s IA32 architecture. The company has been working on the complex port for around a year now, as a major part of its Trimetra server line rollout (CI No 3,162). The Trimetra hybrid mainframe and Unix servers are ICL’s replacements for its venerable Series 39 mainframe systems, and are the focus of ICL’s effort to merge its three existing systems ranges into a single Millennium server line, eventually using Intel Corp’s 64-bit chipset, codenamed Merced. Like just about everybody else, ICL now claims to be working closely with Intel Corp over the development of Merced systems. ICL still has a significant number of large mainframe installations in the UK, particularly in local government and utilities, and says it’s got a comprehensive migration path planned out, promising that OpenVME, Unix and Windows NT lines will share common peripherals, which it claims will mean significant cost of ownership savings. The Trimetra DY server release, the first implementation of OpenVME on an Intel only environment, is due to ship in early 1998, says ICL. It uses emulation technology developed internally by ICL. In the meantime, the company has been selling its LY, and SY series Trimetras with a total of 29 separate models which it began shipping back in June. The boxes use OpenVME version 2 running on the Series 39’s CMOS processor produced by ICL’s parent Fujitsu Ltd, and Unixware 2.1 running on an Intel’s 200MHz Pentium Pro chip, with NT due in the new year.
