Pyramid Technology Corp and Open Environment Corp have merged the Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG (SNI) Sinix and Pyramid DC/OSx System V4-based Unixes into a single offering called Reliant Unix. An upgrade will bring existing Sinix and DC/OSx installations up to Reliant Unix, which supports Pyramid’s enterprise and high-availability features plus the HP OpenView- based TransView systems management featured under Sinix. It will be available for the company’s existing MIPS RISC-based symmetric multiprocessing systems, including the Pyramid Nile and Reliant lines, Siemens Nixdorf’s RM series, and the merged Reliant RM parallel server. However Siemens Nixdorf has now also got Reliant Unix up and running on symmetric multiprocessing iAPX-86 boxes, currently the preserve of Windows NT, and plans to deliver it on servers in the RM lines that will accommodate iAPX-86 or MIPS CPUs. At the high-end, an RM1000 follow-on, the RM2000, is being designed to house either MIPS R10000 or Pentium Pros. A higher- speed version of Siemens Nixdorf’s 200Mbps Meshine interconnect is also promised for the RM2000; the box is expected in 18 months. Pyramid’s Reliant clustering software is being fully integrated with Siemens Nixdorf’s Observed clustering and, retaining the Reliant name, will be deployed on the high-end symmetric multiprocessing RM600 servers and above. The Dolphin Interconnect Technology A/S-based PCI/Scalable Coherent Interconnect distributed shared memory system will be deployed in RM600s by year-end, by which time it and RM400 quad models will be available with R10000s. Siemens Nixdorf is skipping the R5000 entirely. It’s part of what Chen calls a coherent vision of clustered computing, clustering that will eventually feature up and down the MIPS Unix and MIPS BS2000 OSD lines, beginning with shared storage and working up to distributed shared memory. R1000s are now available with 200MHz R10000s at from $172,000.