Dolphin Server Technology A/S, the Oslo, Norway-based subsidiary of Norsk Data A/S, which points out that its Triton 88 range is all its own work and in no way acquired OEM from Motorola (CI No 1,324), reckons that the machine is a pretty nifty implementation. According to marketing manager Lars Lauritzen, the Triton range, introduced late in October, takes only 88000 RISC microprocessors from Motorola, and implements them on a custom CPU board along with its own-designed input-output processors and other system components. The machine comes with from one to four 88100 CPU chips and from two to eight of the 88200 cache memory management units, with the processors all having access to up to 128Mb of high-speed shared memory on the processor board. A proprietary applications-specific circuit handles static column with burst mode to achieve only one wait state for a four-word cache line fill. The company has built its input-output processors around the complex instruction set Motorola 68020, and up to 14 of these can be used where there is a very high volume of input-output activity, although the limit in the base cabinet is five. The machine uses a proprietary bus but this can be interfaced to a VMEbus; the machine is rated at up to 100 MIPS. Dolphin sells entirely OEM, and says that to the best of its knowledge, the Triton 88 is the world’s fastest implementation of the 88000 – it is a much more mature server implementation than the Delta, with essential features in fault tolerance and system availability that the Delta will never have. Confusion arose from the OEM agreement parent company Norsk Data has with Motorola for the 68030-based Uniline machine.
