“As Intel detailed its new architecture for building
eight-processor systems last week, PC vendors touted their new
class of Pentium servers as a viable alternative to RISC.”
“We’re already dependent on servers with three times that many
CPUs,” said company president Barry Shein. “SGI has been shipping
systems with 128 and more CPUs for at least a couple of years
now.”
“Windows NT remains very weak on reliability, is still
relatively closed and is at Microsoft’s mercy for new
capabilities,” said Don Rolph, manager of the advanced analysis and
computational development lab at Texas Instruments. “Linux is more
appropriate for low-cost, high-reliability systems.”
“Dataquest’s Brown agreed that Windows 2000 will be a gating
factor for Intel. “Intel servers can’t pierce the RISC/Unix space
because they have inadequate OSes,” he said.”
“Operating system vendors are scrambling to release more robust
operating systems for Intel, with 64-bit versions of Windows 2000
and Unix scheduled for next year. Last week, SCO announced UnixWare
7 Data Center Edition, which the company said provides 99.99
percent availability, or roughly one hour of downtime per
year.”