NeTpower Inc is all set to ship Sparta, its first Intel Corp Pentium Pro processor-based server. The Sunnyvale, California-based company founded in 1993 with the vision that Microsoft Corp’s Windows NT operating system on iAPX-86 would one day overt ake MIPS Technologies Inc MIPS microprocessor, if not the world. To prove it had faith in its convictions, rather that simply adding iAPX-86-based models to its Calisto Windows NT workstation family, NeTpower burned its boats and abandoned its MIPS R-series line in favor of the Pentium Pro (CI No 2,854). The new Sparta four-processor server is fully compliant with all existing Intel architecture-compatible software to support power hungry applications such as data warehousing, graphics and dig ital video processing. The Sparta series scales up from single to dual and quad 200MHz Pentium-Pro processors, has 12 hot-swap drive bays, six Peripheral Component Interconnect slots based on two PCI buses, four EISA bus slots, up to 1Gb memory and, of course, the factory-installed Windows NT Server operating system. On a price-versus-performance contest against similar offerings from rivals Silicon Graphics Inc, NeT-power clinches it every time, said senior director of engineering at NeTpower Dr David Foster. The company has decided the time is right to move more heavily into Europe. Offices in Germany, France and the UK are planned and preliminary discussions are under way to build a manufacturing site on this side of the Atlantic. Foster said there is a strong possibility the company will be making a public share offer in the not too distant future.
