There is rather more to that agreement between Sequoia Systems Inc, Marlborough, Massachusetts and Samsung Electronics Co, Seoul, South Korea than was revealed in the original announcement, and the pact marks the creation of a three-way axis between the two companies and with Hewlett-Packard Co, which already has ties with each. As well as getting exclusive rights to market Sequoia’s fault-tolerant Unix machines in Korea, and non-exclusive rights in other Asian markets (CI No 1,472), Samsung, Electronic News reveals, will underwrite development of a new low-end machine based on the 68040, which is due to be ready to go in the first quarter of 1992, while Sequioa devotes its financial resources to developing full-sized 68040 machines. And Sequoia is also scheduled to start work on developing a new generation of fault-tolerant Unix machines built around Hewlett-Packard’s Precision Architecture RISC chip sets. But what the US trade weekly missed is that Samsung is already in bed with Hewlett-Packard – a major customer of and significant investor in, Sequoia: last August, Samsung and Hewlett signed an agreement under which the Korean is to fabricate low-end versions of the RISC and to build Spectrumtosh low-end workstations to sell for as little as $5,000, around the chips (CI No 1,237). Under the deal with Sequoia, Samsung will get primary manufacturing rights to the low-end 68040 machine, building it OEM for Sequoia and marketing it in the territories it has been granted. Sequoia will retain the right to make the thing itself as well. Samsung will pay Sequoia royalties on the entry-level machine, which will be limited to four processors and sell for from under $100,000. The mainstream Sequoia line can have up to 64 processors.
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