In the wake of the agreement on Precision Architecture RISC, which leaves Hewlett-Packard Co with a 5% stake in Convex Computer Corp and an agreement that it could increase its stake in a stepped fashion (CI No 1,885), the companies declined to reveal how incremental the steps could be, but apparently nothing would hinder a complete takeover eventually, a la NCR Corp and Teradata Corp. Hewlett-Packard recently pursuaded Convex, which is just transitioning to RISC for future generations, to throw over the MIPS Computer Systems Inc R4000 chips it was using in both a new mega-processor, the C4 continuation of its C series, and in a new massively parallel project it is doing, in favour of its own RISC. Hewlett’s win represents a loss not only to MIPS, believed to be related to a skimpy MIPS floating point performance, but also for Digital Equipment Corp’s Alpha. Convex faulted Alpha on time-to-market grounds, insufficient floating-point performance, and to its little-endian bias in the face of a market that is 80% big-endian, a compatibility issue for Convex. The pair will now exchange core technologies including compilers: Hewlett’s RISC compilers for Convex’s supercomputer compilers. Other technology exchanges are expected. They also intend signing a still unfinished bilateral OEM agreement for Convex to resell PA-RISC products and Hewlett workstations, while Hewlett could sell Convex machines. Convex will be setting up a systems integration group to meet customer demands for workstations to front-end its supercomputers. They will not be necessary with the general-purpose massively parallel processor machines, which are not due to be turned into products for the next two years. Hewlett-Packard was more diffident about whether it would actually sell Convex machines, pleading that it hadn’t tested the market and just didn’t know yet. Saying publicly that it didn’t intend getting into either the supercomputer or massively parallel business, it attributed its interest in Convex to know-how that might be employed in its own multiprocessors. Convex’s formidable massively parallel processor project will run the Open Software Foundation’s Mach kernel, chairman Bob Paluck said, giving it compatibility down the road with Hewlett machines. Hewlett-Packard, however, has recently voiced skepticism over the viability of the OSF/1 operating system and has decided to delay implementing it. The Convex design win gives Hewlett bragging rights about the scalability of its RISC.
