On August 13th Siemens-Pyramid Information Systems Inc will introduce an interconnect board that will enable customers to configure the company’s Unix-based Nile symmetric multiprocessing, R600E ccNUMA and Reliant Clusters of RM1000 massively parallel systems into single logical processing units it calls Smiles (CI No 3,087). Such configurations will be able to handle the processing requirement of any organization’s datacenter, the company says. Siemens-Pyramid – the former Pyramid Technology Corp – is also looking at the possibility of running multiple operating systems under one hood. The company is currently working a next-generation version of the Meshine interconnect, Mesh II, which connects the RM1000’s processing nodes and links them to other Smile processors. The company, which says the Mesh II switch board will transfer data between 40Mbps and 100Mbps, will introduce the new interconnect in new MPP systems currently known as RM2000. Siemens-Pyramid, which uses Mips R4400 CPUs in the RM1000 is skipping the Mips R10000 entirely in favor of the next-generation R12000 part which the Silicon Graphics Inc subsidiary is about to tape out. Further out, Mesh III is being designed as a wire-based protocol that will be faster than other topologies such as gigabit Ethernet. The company says it’s still working on integrating Mesh with Tandem Computers Inc’s ServerNet.
Rejected
Meantime, Siemens-Pyramid will introduce a new version of its Reliant Unix operating system as V5.44 fitted with the 64-bit ‘Aspen’ extensions in a couple of months, though newly-installed president and CEO Raj Nathan, the company’s former R&D chief, says he hasn’t yet decided from where to licence the technology which will be used as the basis for a next-generation of Reliant Unix system software. Like other commercial Unix system vendors, adding 64-bit extensions to its operating system will enable Siemens-Pyramid’s servers to address more memory, handle larger file size and generally process data more quickly. Reliant is a combination of Siemens-Pyramid’s DC/OSx Unix and parent Siemens Nixdorf Informationssystemes AG’s Sinix Unix, and runs on the company’s 64-bit Mips RISC and 32-bit Intel Corp-based servers which are now mostly built by SNI in Germany. Nathan’s team rejected a 64-bit version of Unix SVR4.2MP that’s being created for the Mips RISC by NEC Corp called Tower, and a forthcoming implementation of the Hewlett-Packard Co/Santa Cruz Operation Inc 3DA Unix design NEC plans called Bridge, claiming Tower is not scalable enough for its massively-parallel boxes and that HP is tilting 3DA too heavily in favor of its own HP-UX systems. Nathan reports to Robert Hoog, now running SNI’s Open Enterprise Computing (OEC) group. John Chen, who previously ran Siemens- Pyramid and OEC, has gone to Sybase Inc as president and chief operating officer (CI No 3,206).
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