Pyramid Technology

Pyramid Technology was a computer company that produced a number of RISC-based minicomputers at the upper-end of the performance range. They also became the first company to ship a multiprocessor Unix system in 1985, which formed the basis of their product line into the early 1990s. In 1995 Pyramid was bought by Siemens AG and turned into Siemens Computer Systems, while their services division was merged into Nixdorf. In 1999 Siemens and Fujitsu merged their computer operations to form Fujitsu Siemens Computers, and finally Amdahl was added to the mix in 2000.

Pyramid Technology was formed in 1981 by a number of ex-HP employees, who were interested in building first-rate minicomputers based on RISC designs. Their first series was released in 1983 as the 90x, which used their custom 32-bit scalar processor running at 3MHz.

In late 1985 they released their first SMP system, the dual-processor 98x, running at 7MHz. Several machines in the series were released, from the 1-CPU 9815 to the 4-CPU 9845, over a period of years form 1985 to 1987. The fully-loaded 9845 ran at about 25MIPS, a respectible figure for the era, but not very competitive with high-end supercomputers such as the 1GFLOP Cray-2.

Like many of the early multiprocessor vendors, Pyramid turned to "commodity" RISC CPU's when they started to become practical. The proccessor of the day was the MIPS R3000, and Pyramid released a series of R3000-based machines known as the MIServer starting in 1989. The first machines in the series shipped with anywhere from 4 to 12 R3000's, with top-end performance around 140MIPS. The MIServer was replaced in 1991/2 with the low-end 1-12 CPU MIServer S' (aka S-series) and high-end 24 CPU MIServer ES, both running speed-bumped 33MHz R3000's.

The release of the 64-bit 150MHz R4400 led to the 2-16 CPU Nile series in late 1993. With each CPU capable of 92MIPX, the Nile systems were true supercomputers.

Over the years, the company introduced several product lines, including the Nile, Reliant and RM families. Their last product, known internally as the Mechine, was just coming to market when Siemens bought them.