Almost all the venture capital going into Silicon Valley start-ups these days seems to be coming from Japan, and the latest to have to cross the Pacific is file server builder Auspex Inc, of Santa Clara, California. Auspex launched its first product, the NS 5000, last October (CI No 1,280). The machine uses four Motorola 68020s supported by a proprietary bit-slice processor, runs Sun Microsystems Inc’s SunOS and Network File System, and was claimed to be the first machine to separate the Unix file system from the operating system to create a server capable of supporting over 100 diskless workstations. The company said at the time that it wanted to progress to a Sparc-based version of the machine, raised more money in January to take total investment to $14.8m (CI No 1,348), and has now received another $6m from the other Rising Sun. The new backers are Fuji Xerox Co – Xerox Corp is firmly in the Sparc camp, but has not come out with anything yet outside Japan – and the Nissho Electronics Corp arm of the Nissho Iwai Co trading company. Both backers will import and distribute Auspex’s NS 5000 file server under separate agreements – Nissho Electronics will distribute the server, which is pitched at the same market as NetFrame Systems Inc’s servers, while Fuji Xerox will be offering the thing OEM.
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