Tandem Computers Inc has introduced version 2.0 of its Open Systems Services applications programming interface, the set of Unix services and standards it’s implemented as a personality on top of its NonStop operating system kernel. New is support for Berkeley sockets, Network File System and symbolic links, though it doesn’t yet claim support for XPG4 Version 2 (Unix 95) or TxRPC (transactional Remote Procedure Call) both due in 1996. In addition, the company’s working with a tools and utilities house to bring it up to full Spec 1170-compliance. Tandem’s NonStop SQL database now supports system management storage, IBM Corp’s Escon channels and a load append facility. It also offers Distributed Computing Environment for NonStop. In addition, Tandem is implementing Micro Focus Plc’s CICS application programming interfaces on its MIPS Technologies Inc R-series-based Himalaya parallel processors, which it says will enable IBM customers to migrate mainframe CICS applications to the NonStop environment. The application programming interfaces will be available by mid-1996 as the Parallel Transaction Processing Services for CICS. It may be entirely unconnected that Tandem, which wanted to make public much earlier than October 11 a planned implementation of IBM’s SOMobjects 3.0, System Object Model, for its servers, but was not able to until it had agreed on the unwieldy PTPS Parallel Transaction Processing Services name for its CICS services. Some 70% of Tandem’s turnover is derived from its transaction-based products. Tandem claims to have 50 of its new R4400-based S4000 Unix symmetric multiprocessing servers running the ServerNet ‘big bus’ interconnect in the field and maintains it will begin general deliveries by year-end. It expects to name a new president and chief executive within a month to replace founder Jim Treybig, who has decided to take things a little easier after 22 years, and is becoming chairman. Executives said that if Tandem subsidiary UB Networks chief (and former Unix System Labs boss) Roel Pieper were going to get the job, he would have been named to the post by now.
High-Availability Transforming Software
Meantime, Tandem says the fact that its HATS High-Availability Transforming Software hasn’t been passed back to Silicon Graphics Inc for use on its Challenge servers (even though it is available on the servers from that company that Tandem buys OEM and rebadges as its Integrity NR line) shouldn’t be taken as an indication that there’s tr’uble at t’mill. Despite the general availability of its own ServerNet-ready, one-to-four way S4000 Unix multiprocessing systems this month, Tandem says it will continue to offer Silicon Graphics servers for classic symmetric multiprocessing and pricing. Tandem’s 300Mbps ServerNet interconnect will be used to link multiple S4000s, initially via a sub-$1,000 PCI-to-ServerNet adaptor due in the second half of next year, then directly over fibre optic links, providing, it says, a 215nS latency for local memory access, 600nS over ServerNet through two routers. ServerNet is now being fitted to Tandem’s massively parallel Himalaya line, and will be available by the end of next year, along with the Windows NT-based ServerNet units being developed in conjunction with NEC Corp. The company says it will have a 64-bit Unix out by 1997 and is currently in discussions with Santa Cruz Operation Inc, Hewlett-Packard and other Unix developers about how to get there. It says it will have a plan within three months and is taking its ServerNet technology into the discussions. The company says it has further talks under way with Microsoft Corp about closer co-operation in a number of areas.
