The fact that Hewlett-Packard Co plans to migrate to the first 64-bit part in Intel Corp’s iAPX-86 family from its own proprietary Precision Architecture RISC makes it a desirable partner for almost all other companies in the Unix business, but NEC Corp, although a latecomer to the Hewlett party, now has a privileged position – shared in Japan by Hitachi Ltd – with the Cupertino company, and the two have further strengthened their alliance with a technology exchange and co-operative software development agreement. The agreement – which seems to echo the most recent one between Hewlett and Hitachi (CI No 3,088) – provides for licensing of each others’ technologies and products and for joint development of next-generation Unix operating system components for HP-UX. Under the pact, NEC will dispatch its Unix engineers to Hewlett-Packard sites to enhance HP-UX. To start with, the aim is to create versions of HP-UX that feature increased levels of scalability and performance and are more tightly integrated with the Internet and with intranet-type applications, they say.
