Steve Chen’s new company, formed in his old Eau Claire, Wisconsin base to exploit some of the technology developed by his failed Supercomputer Systems Inc, has previewed its first product, the promised Pentium-based symmetric multiprocessing server, and says it will be launched worldwide in September. Dr Chen, designer of the Cray Research Inc X/MP and Y/MP supercomputers, says his goal in founding Chen Systems was to design the best features of mainframes and supercomputers into a new generation of high performance servers based on core systems built from readily available standard components. The company claims its systems incorporate a new generation of parallel architecture and system management features essential for large enterprises to run strategic and mission-critical application systems in a client-server environment. The machines run the Novell Inc UnixWare 2 operating system because it has the input-output and symmetric multiprocessing capabilities needed to support the performance scalability of the machines. The database and development tools will come from Oracle Corp. The company wants to go global from day one, and has already established sales and support offices in Munich, Paris and Singapore, as well as in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC and Atlanta. Chen Systems says it plans to distribute its products primarily through systems integrators and value-added resellers. The products will also be available through distributor and dealer channels and they will also be offered as OEM products.
