Dolphin Interconnect Solutions A/S, contributor of key technology to Data General Corp’s forthcoming iAPX-86-based multiprocessors (CI No 2,693) was spun out of former Norsk Data affiliate Dolphin Server Technology A/S back in 1992, which was sold to state-owned Norwegian telecommunications group, TBK Telematik, for an undisclosed sum back in January 1994 (CI No 2,328), whereafter it became a subsidiary focusing on support. Dolphin originally developed 88000-based servers using a Scalable Coherent Interface interconnect implementation that was widely admired at the time but did not catch on. So in the sense that Data G eneral Corp and Dolphin were 88000 fellow-travellers, their reunion, working on the former’s new line of AViiONs, makes good sense. Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, meanwhile, has grown to a 35-strong operation with its headquarters and development in Oslo and a five-person marketing operation in Westlake Village, California. It’s nearly profitable, according to vice-president Kare Lochsen, one of Dolphin’s original founders. The company has implemented the 1992 IEEE Scalable Coherent Interface protocol in chip sets, adaptor boards and subsystems. They can be used in symmetric multiprocessing server design, scalable input-output system and clusters of workstations and servers. In March, it introduced a Sparc cluster interface as a single-slot SBus-Scalable Coherent Interface adaptor board which it said transmitted an application-to-application message in four microseconds. It said proposed cluster interconnects such as Ethernet, FDDI, Asynchronous Transfer Mode or Fibre Channel which rely on TCP/IP cannot approach this kind of latency. Last month it won Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG for a PCI-Scalable Coherent Interface bridge chip and engine based on the protocol, which Siemens Nixdorf will be using in new symmetric multiprocessing Unix servers. Siemens Nixdorf will integrate the engine in two application-specific chips that will be used with Dolphin’s link interface chip for external expansion that requires cabling. A PCI-Scalable Coherent Interface bridge chip with the engine on-board will then be used by Siemens Nixdorf in new PCI-based input-output systems. Extensions to the IEEE Scalable Coherent Interface standard for real-time, for creating very large systems as well as performance enhancements to the transport protocol itself, are said to be under way. Dolphin claims that it has a bunch of wins stacked up and a new line of scalable interconnect technologies ready to roll.
