Unisys Corp is giving its ClearPath SMP 6400 Pentium Pro quads a public airing at Unix Expo this week. It has been delivering the things to customers for a couple of months now. The 6400 uses 166MHz or 200MHz Pentium Pros and prices start at around $13,500 for a uniprocessor with 32Mb memory and 2Gb of disk. A fully-configured 200MHz quad-processor model with 1Gb of memory will go from around $60,000. The 6400 uses the Acer Inc Pentium Pro board inside Unisys’s own packaging and peripheral arrangements running UnixWare, Unix System V.4MP or Windows NT. Clustered configurations are available using Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s Clusters; Unisys houses two 6400s in one cabinet for the purpose. They’re seen as departmental boxes. The one- to 10 -way ClearPath SMP 61000 Pentium Pro server which uses Unisys’s 533Mbps SCM Synchronous Coherent Memory – it is already being delivered as a Pentium engine – is due in December. Pentium users will be upgraded. The ccNUMA ClearPath variant based upon Data General Corp’s NUMA backplane design and software plus Scalable Coherent Interface boards will surface mid-1997. Unisys’ use of Data General’s NUMA topology over the NUMA-Q variant developed by its OEM supplier Sequent Computer Systems Inc means the Unisys-Sequent relationship is likely to wither away in regions where there have been few customers. Unisys says its Sequent business is strongest in the UK, the Netherlands and Australasia.
