Start-up will let users gang up Intel PCs

AUSTIN, TEXAS - A pair of ex-IBMers think they have a better way of building low-cost multiprocessor servers.

Ted Scardamalia and Lynn West, both of who worked in RS/6000 development, have formed a company dedicated to building Intel-based systems that scale linearly to as many as 64 processors.

The new company is dubbed Times N Systems - the name hinting that the company's systems will process applications to the nth power.

The entrepreneurs claim that their systems will address the shortcomings of current approaches, such as symmetrical multiprocessing and clustering. Multiprocessing systems today are hindered by memory contention, I/O bottlenecks and latency issues, Scardamalia and West claim.

Times N will use a "share whatever you can" approach to memory management by giving each processor its own memory, as well as access to a general pool of memory available via an attached hublike device.

In effect, the company is taking the best of symmetrical multiprocessing by letting processors share memory. It is also taking the best of clustering, but giving processors dedicated memory and I/O as well.

But don't get your hopes too high about Times N because the firm still has plenty to prove. The company was formed only one month ago, employs just five people and has yet to move into its Austin office.

Times N, which has received $4 million in venture funding, doesn't plan to dem-onstrate a product for 12 months, and the company probably won't have a product shipping until the end of next year.

Still, industry observers are intrigued.

"The design has some promise," says Scott Winkler, an analyst with Gartner Group in Stamford, Conn. "However, it is very dependent on the cooperation of middleware companies, such as Oracle."

Winkler points out that IBM and other companies have looked into such a multiprocessing approach in the past.

Middleware and database software will need to be revised to run on Times N systems. Applications running on top of the middleware and databases will only need to be tuned, Scardamalia says. Initially, Times N will support Windows NT, but the com-pany plans to add Unix support later.

The company initially will provide a kit containing software, Gigabit Ethernet interconnects, a hublike device for accessing a shared memory and cabling. Customers can use the components to tie together existing Intel processor-based servers.

The use of off-the-shelf In-tel servers could make Times N's offerings much less expensive than typical multiprocessing machines from the likes of Tandem, Winkler says.

The Times N software is key to the system's operation. The software will manage the hardware interconnects and the partitioning of application tasks across processors in one or more servers.

The software will also ensure that applications are seen as a single image by a Times N system, in order to protect data integrity.

"The fundamental problem is fooling the application into believing it is running on one system when it is not," says James Gruener, an analyst with Aberdeen Group in Boston. "If the company can do that effectively, then that's an interesting product."

Further down the road, Times N plans to implement its multiprocessor design in a single machine. Times N also will build in multiple paths to shared memory and interconnect redundancy.