Pentium puts muscle in Apricot's server range

Apricot is the latest vendor to show off Pentium Pro-based server technology, although for shipment of actual product, resellers will have to wait for the summer at the earliest. With the market for powerful LAN servers hotting up, there is increased competition between Intel-based manufacturers and Unix ones for pre-eminance in the multi-processor arena (see Adding Value feature).

Apricot claims to have leveraged parent company Mitsubishi's mainframe expertise in the design of the FT4200. The product follows last year's launch of the Shogun SMP server, and is the latest addition to that range.

The Shogun brand name appears to have been dropped. The FT4200 will have up to four Pentium Pro CPUs, up to five Ultra SCSI channels, 2Gb of memory and a dual PCI bus architecture. Apricot has promised a launch price that matches the 166Mhz Compaq ProLiant 4500.

ALR has also pre-announced a Pentium Pro machine.