DG forms THiiN Internet, NUMA units

Electronic News, June 24, 1996

Westboro, Mass.--Data General formed two new business units, devoted to Internet appliances and its products using non-uniform memory access (NUMA) architecture, respectively. U.K. computer maker International Computers Ltd. (ICL) and Unix software vendor SCO also formed alliances with DG to use the NUMA architecture.

Data General's THiiN Line unit will develop Internet products including a line of "thin servers," scheduled for introduction early next year. Tom West, currently Data General's senior VP of advanced development, will head the new unit.

"We are leveraging our existing server and storage expertise to develop an entirely new line of 'computing appliances' for the Internet model," said DG president and CEO Ronald L. Skates. "The Internet is defining a new form of computing...There is a greater need to view information, rather than 'process' it. This means we need to rethink the way we design computers."

DG is targeting the high-end commercial server market with its new NUMALiiNE business unit, which will develop OEM and distribution relationships for the company's NUMA systems and technology. NUMA permits multiple Intel architecture baseboards, or Standard High Volume (SHV) servers, to be linked into systems.

VP Phil Gerskovich, the new unit head, said: "NUMA is becoming a leading technology because it enables servers to be built that can scale to hundreds of processors, but, unlike massively parallel processing (MPP) systems, will still run the thousands of existing symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) applications."

ICL and SCO have already adopted the technology, with ICL licensing NUMA for its high-end servers. SCO will work with DG to develop a NUMA version of its SCO UnixWare operating system. DG and ICL recently announced their commitment to SCO UnixWare as an operating system for volume enterprise servers. Alok Mohan, president and CEO of SCO, said: "The inclusion of Data General's NUMA technology is a key step towards ensuring that SCO UnixWare becomes the premier platform for enterprise computing."