Phoenix Technologies Inc says it has won seven of the dozen or so OEMs building systems around Intel Corp’s IA-64 processor, who have licensed its Ready64 firmware for Merced and future McKinley processors. Groupe Bull, Hitachi Ltd, NEC Corp, Sequent Computer Systems Inc Siemens AG, Stratus Computer Inc and Unisys Corp are using the Ready64 source code, developers tools, training and consultancy services in the design and deployment process of their IA-64 hardware. Phoenix, which since its acquisition of Award Software International Inc last year has dominated the high-volume merchant PC BIOS market, says it’s made a substantial $10m, 175-man month investment in the IA-64 project since it began working with Intel on the project back in 1995. Its technology, the first available, supports both Intel and non- Intel chipsets, and Phoenix says it has included lots of hooks and APIs for proprietary features, and for backward compatibility with the IA-32 base. Phoenix says it’s confident that it will win more IA-64 OEMs, although some of the largest outstanding OEMS, such as Compaq Computer Corp, Dell Computer Corp and IBM Corp, have in the past favored proprietary BIOS technology over merchant products from companies such as Phoenix.
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