Although its symmetric multiprocessing PowerPC development agreement with IBM Corp is completed, Compagnie des Machines Bull SA, which has already ploughed $100m into the Pegasus, says it has 600 people working on further development on its own. It is proceeding with systems based on PowerPC 604 and 620 and, as expected, will have a clustered option ready during the first half of next year that will raise the four-processor limit of Escala to eight, via Fibre Distributed Data Interface links. It may also collaborate to deliver IBM’s High Availability Clustered Multi-Processing software that the company will use to cluster its own RS/6000 Pegasus boxes, although it claims it does not know the answers to any future IBM development questions right now because of conflict between the IBM divisions each working separately on PowerPC developments. The clustering technology is part of the Mississippi project which was uncovered at Bull long ago (CI No 2,375). Bull is also developing a high speed interconnect parallel highly scalable cluster, and says that it hopes to have it available by the end of 1995.
