As expected, Mountain View, California-based Pyramid Technology Corp has launched the latest generation of its symmetric multiprocessing RISC-based systems, the MIServer ES series. Based on MIPS Technologies Inc’s R3002A microprocessor, the ES servers are configured with from two to 24 CPUs and are rated at from 32 MIPS to 768 MIPS. Four models are available, the two-way MIS-1ES comes with 128Mb memory, 6Gb disk and up to five input-output channels – and is priced at UKP50,000. The MIS-2ES has from two to four CPUs, 256Mb of memory, and 48Gb of disk – and costs UKP72,000. The MIS-4ES comes with eight R3002As, 512Mb RAM, 128Gb disk, and includes support for up to 18 input-output channels – it’s priced at UKP141,000. The 24-way MIS-12ES has 1Gb of memory, 256Gb of disk and costs UKP168,000. Pyramid plans to release R4000SMP board upgrades for the ES server line in July 1993. In addition, it claims will be the first to implement MIPS’ R4000SMP symmetrical multiprocessing part. The R4000SMP iteration will feature new memory and bus modifications and integrated cache – the company says it had to alter previous MIPS R series parts to accommodate the cache. R5000 and R10000 board upgrades will follow when MIPS delivers. OEM customers, including Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA and Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG have already sold 50 ES servers, says Pyramid. The company also introduced its latest symmetric multi-processing implementation of Unix System Laboratories Inc’s System V.4 Unix, DC/OSx 1.1. It includes a high availability array system for clustered environments, resource and storage management facilities, a graphical user interface called the Visual System Manager, Fairshare – a control and allocation facility for workload prioritising, network queuing, RxFS – a reliant file system, and C2 security functions. The MIServer ES systems are available now.
