Philips Business Systems was showing off its first 68030-based P9050 Unix supermicro at the Hannover Fair last week, but the Dutch company is looking towards RISC microprocessors to provide a performance step-up in its next generation systems. Software Productivity Systems marketing manager John Williams said that the evaluation process was still continuing, but that he would be very surprised if the company did not choose Motorola’s forthcoming 88000 RISC processor – Philips’ Signetics chip shop is an official second source for lower level members of the Motorola 68000 family. Williams said that higher performance systems would be necessary to allow Unix to compete in installations involving computer aided software engineering tools such as its Maestro Integrated Project Support Environment. Philips recently signed a deal to supply five Maestro systems to the UK’s Automobile Association, linked to a central IBM mainframe and supporting 212 proprietary Philips workstations and micros. Unix systems will eventually be integrated into this and similar projects by a communications sub-system, also demonstrated at Hannover, which allows access between Maestro and an X400 message passing network using Unix-based systems as a gateway. The intention, says Williams, is gradually to put more and more functionality into the Unix box, with Maestro under Unix the ultimate aim.