By William Fellows
IBM Corp’s new 64-bit Monterey Unix, based upon AIX (see separate story) will be supplemented with some of Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s IA-64 developments. These are claimed to be at least nine months ahead of any competition in terms of booting and memory loading, as well as including Sequent Computer Systems Inc’s data center expertise. IBM will provide advanced features such as shared process partitioning, logging and journaling and technology to get beyond 99.995% uptime. Intel has sanctioned the creation of a new IA-64 emulator for Monterey’s development. AIX- on-PowerPC is used as the starting point because everything AIX except the kernel itself is now 64-bit, and PowerPC’s memory management and other basic operating functions are said to be much closer to Merced than IA-32 is. SCO will implement the work as little endian system software for Intel and sell Monterey as the successor to its recently-introduced 32-bit UnixWare 7. Monterey is a big middleware play for IBM, which should also enable it to control platform development to some extent by porting Lotus Domino, OLTP, messaging and other software to Monterey. SCO will also integrate some of Monterey and the middleware into a forthcoming upgrade of the 32-bit UnixWare 7, which IBM resells on its NetFinity PC servers. SCO also gets the channel. IBM will use Monterey on future IA-64 generations of NetFinities, it will also implement the work as a new version of AIX on its PowerPC hardware. APIs will be harmonized across the three architectures – IA-32, IA-64 and PowerPC – as far as possible to present a common target for ISVs with minimal recompiling. The partners are handing over tens of millions of dollars to attract ISVs to write for Monterey. Intellectual property ownership and the royalty stream will be divided according to contribution. A small detail that may speak volumes for the arrangement is the choice of name for the venture. SCO, which had code-named the project Stilton – as in Big Blue cheese – rolled over to IBM code-name Monterey, the bay in which Santa Cruz is located, and also a cheese itself. Moreover IBM has created a Unix brand group run by Rajiv Samant who has led the five month old Monterey project, within Bob Stephenson’s server group. It figured leaving Monterey in its RS/6000 group would afford it little credibility. Monterey probably puts the kibosh on the likelihood that Sun Microsystems Inc will attract any other OEM wins for its Solaris x86 Unix. The successor to Solaris 2.6 will be unveiled today as Solaris 7. Moreover SCO brags that after stealing Sequent from Compaq, Monterey will win OEMs away from Sun’s x86 bandwagon. Sun’s current strategy is to ignore it [UnixWare], SCO said. Now the nightmare [IBM and SCO teaming on Intel Unix] will become part of its day job, the company said. SCO says it will maintain its 32-bit OpenServer Unix for at least six more years. It says the deal provides a greater opportunity to sell to the IBM customer base because under existing guidelines Big Blue’s salespeople currently refer any potential Intel server sale worth over $50,000 to the AIX team. SCO’s other investors and development partners, including Unisys, Acer and ICL were quick to endorse Monterey. Sequent rival Data General Corp was noticeably absent, while IBM rounded up AIX supporters including Bull, Motorola, and Thomson-CSF’s Cetia. On ccNUMA, SCO said if it could support one ccNUMA technique (Data General), why not two or three (IBM and Sequent). After all the majority of ccNUMA work is hardware-oriented and lower down than the kernel, it observed. A roadmap of Monterey work will follow.
IBM-produced
In the meantime, Sequent’s entire relationship with Compaq, which pre-dates the latter’s acquisition of DEC, is now in the balance. Because it could not afford to develop a 64-bit version of its Dynix/ptx Unix Sequent had thrown its Unix lot in with DEC and was to co-develop a next-generation version of Digital Unix called Bravo Unix for IA-64 and Alpha informed by Dynix which it would OEM. In return DEC was to OEM Sequent’s ccNUMA Merced servers from 2000. Compaq recently articulated a plan to use Alpha for its high-end Tandem servers, not IA-64 as Tandem had originally planned. Sequent chairman Casey Powell said Sequent’s whole relationship with Compaq was under review. Compaq agreed although it maintained Sequent’s contribution was not material to Bravo Unix and that it would announce new OEMs, and a new name for the operating system by year-end. Sequent, a wholly enterprise-oriented concern distanced itself from SCO’s small business pedigree saying that IBM is producing the show and has signed individual agreements with SCO, Intel and Sequent. Compaq’s position is further complicated by the fact that it does $2bn business on Intel servers running SCO’s older generation 32- bit OpenServer Unix, plus UnixWare. SCO fully expects Compaq to OEM UnixWare 7 and its OEM version of Monterey. Compaq agreed that nothing has changed in its relationship with SCO, including their intent to develop interoperability at the interface level between their respective next-generation Unixes.
