naito@kei16.ks.fujitsu.JUNET (NAITO Masayuki) (08/06/88)
Dear, All. --------- Does anyone know about mini-computer called "Stratos" ? What is the maker ? What kind of OS the machine has ? What kind of language the machine use ? Or other info ? Any commnet will be acceptable. Masayouki Naito naito@kei16.ks.fujitsu.junet
elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green) (08/07/88)
In message <497@kei16.ks.fujitsu.JUNET>, naito@kei16.ks.fujitsu.JUNET (NAITO Masayuki) says: >Dear, All. >--------- >Does anyone know about mini-computer called "Stratos" ? It's a multi-processor computer based upon the 680xx family of 32-bit microprocessors. It is a "redundant" machine, designed so that if one component goes down, the machine keeps running. Other than that, I know little about it. >What is the maker ? Stratos. >What kind of OS the machine has ? A sort of Multics derivative. Note that Unix was originally a stripped-down Multics with a few different features. >What kind of language the machine use ? I'd assume PL/1, since that was what Multics was written in, and since many of the original Multics people filtered through Stratos. >Or other info ? The primary use of redundant "fail-save" machines of this sort is for financial transaction processing, like in a bank, where you don't want to lose data to a disk drive failure etc. They are probably too expensive to use as "general purpose" computers. However, several of the American on-line services, such as Quantum Link, are using Stratos equipment. >Any commnet will be acceptable. > >Masayouki Naito >naito@kei16.ks.fujitsu.junet -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 MISFORTUNE, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.
spector@vx2.GBA.NYU.EDU (David HM Spector) (08/07/88)
A friend of mine is a systems person who takes care of a bunch of the critters,
here's what I recall from a distant conversation about them...
Status machines are multiple processor transaction processing machines.
They run a proprietary OS, and are supposed to be very fault tolerant.
They are programmed in Pascal and are supposed to have a very nice syntax
directed editor that fills in the fields of system calls for you.
I believe they are made by Stratus computing...
That's all I remember... there was a lot of saki flowing while we were talking.
David
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David HM Spector New York University
Senior Systems Programmer Graduate School of Business
Arpa: SPECTOR@GBA.NYU.EDU Academic Computing Center
UUCP:...!{allegra,rocky,harvard}!cmcl2!spector 90 Trinity Place, Rm C-4
HamRadio: N2BCA MCIMail: DSpector New York, New York 10006
AppleLink: D1161 CompuServe: 71260,1410 (212) 285-6080
"What computer puts out work like this?" "Hire us and we'll tell you."
XYZZYGLORPspector@vx2.GBA.NYU.EDU (David HM Spector) (08/08/88)
A friend of mine is a systems person who takes care of a bunch of the critters,
here's what I recall from a distant conversation about them...
Status machines are multiple processor transaction processing machines.
They run a proprietary OS, and are supposed to be very fault tolerant.
[ooops!!! Error in first Posting..]
They are programmed in PL/1 and are supposed to have a very nice syntax
directed editor that fills in the fields of system calls for you.
I believe they are made by Stratus computing...
That's all I remember... there was a lot of saki flowing while we were talking.
David
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David HM Spector New York University
Senior Systems Programmer Graduate School of Business
Arpa: SPECTOR@GBA.NYU.EDU Academic Computing Center
UUCP:...!{allegra,rocky,harvard}!cmcl2!spector 90 Trinity Place, Rm C-4
HamRadio: N2BCA MCIMail: DSpector New York, New York 10006
AppleLink: D1161 CompuServe: 71260,1410 (212) 285-6080
"What computer puts out work like this?" "Hire us and we'll tell you."
XYZZYGLORPjans@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM (Jan Steinman) (08/09/88)
... and IBM owns a large chunk (all) of Stratus. Their scheme employs fully-redundant, "hot-backup" voting pairs of 680xx processors -- no processing gain is attempted through parallelism. They were formed by a bunch of Multics aficionados, who wanted to see that system run on a micro, and instead of making another "me too" supermicro, they targed the niche field of fault-tolerant computing. I used to work for the competition (Tandem). Tandem uses a software/hardware approach to fault-tolerance, that provides a performance increase through large-grained distributed processing when all processors are healthy. :::::: Software Productivity Technologies -- Experiment Manager Project :::::: :::::: Jan Steinman N7JDB Box 500, MS 50-383 (w)503/627-5881 :::::: :::::: jans@tekcrl.TEK.COM Beaverton, OR 97077 (h)503/657-7703 ::::::
jon@cloud9.UUCP (Jonathan Stern) (08/10/88)
In article <3790@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM>, jans@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM (Jan Steinman) writes: > ... and IBM owns a large chunk (all) of Stratus. Their scheme employs > IBM owns none of Stratus they simply OEM our computers. (as does Olivetti) > I used to work for the competition (Tandem). Tandem uses a software/hardware > approach to fault-tolerance, that provides a performance increase through > large-grained distributed processing when all processors are healthy. Tandem does not gain performance through distributed processing but rather pays the penalty for distributed processing for all processing. The result is linear growth as proccessors are added but at a penalty to non-distributed applications. Jonathan Stern -- Stratus Computer harvard!anvil!es!Jonathan_Stern