Major Japanese companies are in a panic to get fault-tolerant systems to market – NEC Corp did an OEM deal with Stratus Computer Inc and Fujitsu Ltd has developed its own machine, and Toshiba Corp has now firmed up its May agreement with Marlborough, Massachusetts-based fault-tolerant Unix systems builder Sequoia Systems Inc under which Sequoia is to give it a leg-up into the market – but rather than taking the forthcoming machines built around Hewlett-Packard Co’s Precision Architecture RISC, Toshiba wants to take Sequoia’s Unix System V implementation and fault-tolerant technology and adapt it to the Sparc RISC microprocessor. Under the agreement, the two will jointly develop a suite of fault-tolerant Unix workstations, communications systems and database servers, and a transaction processing system. The agreement calls for joint ownership and cross-licensing of technology developed under the agreement.Toshiba will initially manufacture a Sparc multi-processor, fault-tolerant server that embodies Sequoia technology, for distribution in Japan. The server will be compatible with Sequoia’s current architecture as well as systems now under development that will use the Precision Architecture RISC. Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd already has an agreement to market Sequoia systems non-exclusively in Japan, and an option to manufacture them – and may work with Sequoia to do a version using the MIPS Computer Systems Inc RISC (CI No 1,678). The agreement with Toshiba also covers the 68040-based Series 400, and the low-end Series 40 variant that is due out later this year. The decision by Toshiba to opt for the Sparc comes despite the fact that Toshiba is a licensee of the MIPS chip design – and has an agreement with Siemens AG for joint development of new versions of MIPS’ R-series RISC. Toshiba also buys Sun Microsystems Inc Sparcstations OEM.
