The next piece of Hitachi Ltd’s 27-month old PowerPC jigsaw is about to fall into place with news from our sister paper Unigram X that the Japanese company’s Hitachi Data Systems Corp computer systems organization will soon begin selling Compagnie des Machines Bull SA’s Escala symmetric multiprocessing servers worldwide, except in Japan. IBM Corp, with whom Hitachi struck its original PowerPC pact, already sells the AIX-based Escalas as its RS/6000 G, J and R models. From next month, Bull’s one- to eight-way Micro Channel Architecture servers come fitted with 112MHz PowerPC 604 processors. The OEM agreement is an important one for Bull, which is now seeking to restore its business around a healthy open systems operation housed in a new Enterprise Information Systems Division. Hitachi Data will also resell Bull’s PCI-based PowerPC 604 Estrella desktops and minitowers, which are based on Motorola Computer Group’s Black Hawk desktop architecture given a server flavour. They run AIX and Windows NT. Bull expects that there will be a further upgrade of the Escala system bus by year-end that will enable it to support higher clock-rate PowerPC 604s, presumably the 150MHz 604e. Meantime Bull’s 64-bit PowerPC endeavour, the 620-based PCI bus Pegakid, is now running AIX and Windows NT across four processors in the company’s Milan, Italy labs. Production versions of the 200MHz Red October 620, version 2.0, are due in November, and the system is expected early 1997. The PCI bus version of Escala, which Bull shareholder Motorola Inc is helping design, is now expected in the second half of next year. Bull says it is disappointed that the Solaris-on-PowerPC effort is being abandoned. Hitachi Data Systems already re-badges the IBM R S/6000 SP parallel systems as its SR4300 family.
