Sperry 5000/Arete' 1200 Unix Mini

On 10/14/11 9:46 AM, Al Kossow wrote: Byte Mar 1987 BIX, the BYTE Information Exchange, now has more than 12,000 users, the estimated capacity for the 1986 Arete supermicrocomputer running BIX. The system continues to perform well despite the heavy work load, but it is clear that the hardware must be expanded dramatically to support the substantial growth planned for 1987 and beyond. Indeed, we stopped promotional mailings for several months in order to avoid swamping the current 88-port BIX system. We will replace the system with a new one capable of supporting 250 simultaneous users, with NFS (network file server) networking capability to provide for expansion to even greater size. Approximately 20 companies were invited to submit proposals for the next generation of BIX hardware, and most did so. Bidders were required to submit hardware configurations permitting growth to 500 and then 1000 simultaneous users. As of this writing, the number of bidders has been narrowed to four by our technical team at McGraw-Hill in New York. Two supermicrocomputer companies and two superminicomputer companies remain in contention. We are installing BIX software on all the remaining contenders and running simulations of various user loads. By the time you read this, we should have selected a vendor and be in the process of installing the new system. If we should encounter performance problems before the new system is up, rest assured that hardware capacity will soon triple