"Chrysler Making Drive To Wintel"
crn.com
Chrysler Corp. will dump its Unix RISC environment and change its 4,000 workstations over to a Microsoft Corp. Intel Corp. solution, the companies said Monday.
The deal, which will involve a rollout early next year, will include workstations based on Microsoft's NT operating system and Intel's Xeon 400MHz and 450MHz processors, said Anand Chandrasekher, Intel's general manager of workstation products.
"It's a win of strategic importance for us," Chandrasekher said.
Intel said Chrysler was still in the process of selecting an OEM to provide the technology and that it would replace Unix based machines currently provided by Sun Microsystems Inc., Hewlett Packard Co., and IBM Corp.
Chandrasekher said Intel's continued development of its 64 bit processing technology, via its Merced processor, "is and continues to be a part of the discussion" with Chrysler. He said that the timetable slip on Merced, which Intel announced earlier this year, did not impact the discussions with Chrysler.
He said Merced is still on target for general availability in mid 2000.
Chrysler and Microsoft were not immediately available for comment. However, Chandrasekher said he believes Chrysler would rely on its existing relationships with the channel to provide the new, Wintel technology as the auto maker migrates from the Unix RISC environment.
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