Fault-tolerant systems builder Tandem Computers Inc, Cupertino, California has resorted to the Chorus Systemes SA microkernel to provide the foundation for an operating environment that will enable it to bring together its proprietary and Unix environments together on the same machines. The company will this week unveil an ingenious new stage of development in the process of reconciling its proprietary Guardian/Cyclone and NonStop-UX/Integrity Unix lines with a new line of MIPS Technologies Inc RISC-based systems, including a 4,000-processor monster, which will run Guardian or NonStop-UX as personalities on top of its implementation of the Chorus microkernel in its NonStop Kernel. The new systems will support existing proprietary and Unix applications, and the firm is also working with Unix System Laboratories Inc to get a NonStop version of the Tuxedo transaction processing monitor up on the microkernel environment. Tandem’s new NonStop Himalaya range are based upon MIPS’ R3000 and the latest R4400 RISC CPU. The UKP20,000 Himalaya K100 is an entry level server designed for local network, office and deskside environments, the company says. It comes with from 16Mb to 32Mb RAM, up to 32Gb disk, has a 20Mbps input-output bandwidth and is configured with two Motorola Inc 68000 family or MIPS R3000 CPUs in each cabinet. The R3000-based K1000 scalable parallel server for high transaction throughput comes with 32Mb to 128Mb RAM, up to 522Gb disk, has an 80Mbps input-output bandwidth and is also configured with two CPUs per cabinet. Tandem says it delivers up to 30 times the performacne of the K100. The R4400-based Himalaya K10000 is Tandem’s largest ever machine and can be configured with up to 4,000 processors in domains of 224 CPUs using its TorusNet bus technology. It comes with 64Mb to 512Mb RAM and can support over 2Tb disk. It offers 320Mbps input-output bandwith and comes with two CPUs per cabinet. It will deliver more than 2,000 times the performance of the K100, Tandem says. The K100 and K1000 ship in September – the K10000 is due in the fourth quarter. The XPG4-compliant NonStop Kernel is also due in September – a Posix-compliant developers kit arrives in December. The Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment and a microkernel version of Tuxedo will be available by the middle of 1994.
