Intergraph Corp appears to have accepted that its Clipper RISC has no future beyond the present iteration, and has decided to throw in its lot with Sun Microsystems Inc and the Sparc, in a move that will see Microsoft Corp’s Windows NT going up on the Sparc. The Huntsville, Alabama company says it will implement NT on Intergraph systems using the Sparc, planned to appear in 1995. The implementation will support the little-endian byte ordering to be included in future Sparc implementations, and Integraph will now devote its RISC design skills to helping Sun develop future generations of Sparc microprocessors. Intergraph Advanced Processor Division will develop high-end 64-bit Sparc microprocessors with Sun’s Sparc Technology Business; both will have the right to use these processors in their system-level products, while Sun will offer them on the open market. Intergraph demonstrated the Clipper version of Windows NT at Windows World ’93 in May, and said it would provide its full range of technical applications for Windows NT on iAPX-86 and Clipper architectures. Intergraph now plans to offer these applications in 1995 on Sparc-based Windows NT systems as well. Tom Steele, Intergraph’s executive vice-president of software systems, observed We’re pleased to be able to put an end to the rumours and speculation: Windows NT will officially be available for the Sparc architecture, and Intergraph is providing it, adding that the NT experience had been positive.
