On the one hand Sun Microsystems Inc turns its nose up at ccNUMA distributed shared memory architectures such as Sequent Computer Systems Inc’s NumaQ (because of the latencies incurred by acessing remote memory), but on the other it’s seeking more OEM business for a 64-bit version of its Solaris x86 operating system. While Sequent’s is being touted as a likely Solaris x86 partner – and Sequent chairman Casey Powell recently told Computergram the two companies are in talks (CI No 3,252) – Sun told us yesterday that implementing Solaris x86 APIs on top of Sequent’s Dynix/ptx Unix, even if it is tailored to support ccNUMA, won’t be a difficult job.
