Motorola Inc’s Motorola Computer Group has re-jigged the low-end symmetric multiprocessing offering it sources from PowerPC partner Compagnie des Machines Bull SA, introducing a one-to-four-way 601-based machine as the PowerStack Series I. Although Motorola is already selling Bull’s one-to-eight-way Escalas as the Series MP, it says customers requiring one or two processors typically find the Escala box comes with far more expandability than they will ever need or use. Consequently, the two firms have stripped out some slots and reduced the chassis size to come up with a low-end departmental system supporting 40 to 250 users. The Micro Channel Architecture AIX unit comes with up to 512Mb memory, 13.4Gb disk and costs from $19,000. Series I comes in above Motorola’s own Peripheral Component Interconnect bus PowerStack Series E and below the Series MP. The company claims it has now got working prototypes of the PCI bus technology to which it and Bull are migrating the Escala systems, and which will host other operating systems.
