Siemens-Nixdorf Informationsysteme AG is another commercial Unix system vendor that has turned to Scalable Coherent Interface-based interconnect technology to extend the reach of its shared memory architecture. And, like Data General Corp, the company has taken itself off to Dolphin Interconnect Solutions A/S, and is planning to use a PCI/Scalable Coherent Interface chip the Norwegian company is building, in new additions to its high-end MIPS Technologies Inc R4400-based RM servers line planned for in the second quarter of next year. A top-of-the-line RM600 currently accommodates up to 24 processors over the company’s SPBus running its Pyramid Technology Corp unit’s DC/Osx Unix. Whether the new Scalable Coherent Interface boxes will appear as RM servers isn’t clear, because they will also represent the marriage of the RM line with Pyramid’s own symmetric multiprocessor Nile servers, and a new naming convention may kick in. The first joint Siemens Nixdorf-Pyramid machine is of course the Reliant RM1000 massive ly parallel processing box using Pyramid’s Meshine interconnect to which the new symmetric multiprocessor units will be attached via a new system bus, the company said. Siemens Nixdorf is using the PCI/Scalable Coherent Interface bridge chip and protocol engine in two interconnect boards and Dolphin’s Scalable Coherent Interface link interface chip for remote interconnect and cache coherency. Jurgen Kock, Siemens Nixdorf manager of central components said the company is currently evaluating RM600 clustering using Asynchronous Transfer Mode.
