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To: Chemsync who wrote (8825)	1/19/1998 1:55:00 PM
From: Mark Finger	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14631

>>Could you comment on the following story and the impact Intel could >>have on Informix as it evolves towards 64-bit. The thing to understand is that each manufacturer will need a version of Unix (and Solaris is simply another version of Unix, with some high level differences). Sequent machines have been based on the Intel processors, and they are planning for the successor. Informix generally supports the primary OS of any platform; this usually means the one that the manufacturer supports. In reality, this decision means little to Informix. However, it has a lot more meaning for the other three players. 1. DEC has been the company that has longest had 64-bit support in its OS (its version of Unix is called OSF-1, where the OSF is for the public company that tried to unify the versions of Unix). DEC gets a significant customer. 2. Sun is the big loser. They have been trying to unify the Unix world under its software (especially as relates to Java), and this is a real black-mark, especially since the public statement of reason is the poor performance of the base code (the Intel version) that Sun wanted to sell. 3. The results are most important to Sequent. They were the early promoter of parallel processing (especially in working with the DBMS vendors), and their NUMA architecture is an interesting alternate. The jump to Merced may allow them to move to a better performance, because Intel chips lag the Alpha, PowerPC and HP's PA-RISC in performance. Merced seems poised to jump into the leadership in chip performance, and Sequent does not want the OS to penalize it. Further, Sequent is too small to do the R&D to both improve hardware and software at the leading edge, so they are buying help.