Microsoft Corp and its leading partners in the Advanced RISC Computing Architecture consortium, Compaq Computer Corp, Digital Equipment Corp and MIPS Computer Systems Inc are seeking to recruit some 40 other companies into the consortium, which looks like an even-handed attempt to derail the strategies of IBM on the one hand and of those companies that really believe in Unix like Sun Microsystems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and NCR Corp on the other. The effort, to establish a new workstation standard built around the MIPS R4000 64-bit RISC and Microsoft Corp’s Portable OS/2. According to Electronic News, companies at the receiving end of the lobbying effort include MIPS RISC-makers Siemens AG, controlling parent of Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, NEC Corp and Toshiba Corp; MIPS chip users Control Data Corp, Prime Computer Inc, Sony Corp, Bull SA, Tandem Computers Inc, Stardent Computers Inc and Kubota Corp, and Pyramid Technology Corp and its OEM customer Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA. Wang Laboratories Inc is also said to be on the hit-list. The group has also been trying to split the Sparc International camp by recruiting Fujitsu Ltd, but Fujitsu said it had backed off for now. Although Microsoft was thought to be in the driving seat with a 64-bit version of its New Technology operating system, the US trade weekly suggests that a version of the Open Software Foundation’s OSF/1 Unix is a rival contender. There is also a fight on over the bus structure, with Compaq pushing EISA and DEC its own bus. The group, now expected to come clean on April 8, also aims to define networking protocols and applications binary interface.
