Solbourne Computer Inc. was originally a vendor of computer systems based in Longmont, Colorado, United States, at first 52% owned by Matsushita.University of Sussex bulletin, 30th October 1990
/ref> In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the company produced a range of

computer workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workst ...

s and servers based on the

SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system develope ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...

architecture, largely compatible with Sun Microsystems'

Sun-4 Sun-4 is a series of Unix workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1987. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employing microprocessors based on Sun's own SPARC V7 RIS ...

systems. Some of these are notable for supporting symmetric multiprocessing some time before Sun themselves produced multiprocessor systems. Even when Sun produced multiprocessor systems, SunOS uses an

asymmetric multiprocessing An asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP or ASMP) system is a multiprocessor computer system where not all of the multiple interconnected central processing units (CPUs) are treated equally. For example, a system might allow (either at the hardware or ope ...

model rather than OS/MP's symmetric multiprocessing model; Sun would not adopt symmetric multiprocessing until the release of Solaris 2.0 in 1992. Due to the cost of engineering and producing new systems to compete with Sun's increasingly competitive hardware offerings and the loss of symmetric multiprocessing as a distinguishing feature, in 1994, Solbourne left the computer hardware business, with

Grumman The Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, later Grumman Aerospace Corporation, was a 20th century American producer of military and civilian aircraft. Founded on December 6, 1929, by Leroy Grumman and his business partners, it merged in 1994 ...

Systems Support Corporation taking over support for Solbourne customers until 2000. In 1994, Walt Pounds assumed the role of CEO of Solbourne, and the Solbourne headquarters were moved to Boulder, Colorado. From that point until July 2008, Solbourne focused on providing consulting services and solutions based on Oracle Applications and associated technologies. Solbourne established a strong reputation in the Oracle E-Business Suite community, and has become a dominant provider of consulting services to state and local Oracle E-Business Suite customers. On July 11, 2008, Solbourne closed a transaction to sell substantially all of the company assets to Deloitte Consulting. The Solbourne management team and more than 100 professionals joined Deloitte's Enterprise Applications, Technology Integration and Human Capital service areas.

Models

Solbourne's range comprises the following: *

Multiprocessor Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. There ar ...

workstations and servers using the

KBus MBus is a computer bus designed and implemented by Sun Microsystems for communication between high speed computer system components, such as the central processing unit, motherboard and main memory. SBus is used in the same machines to connect ad ...

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A compu ...

inter-processor bus: ** Series4: 16.67 MHz Fujitsu MB86900 processor(s) ** Series5: 33 MHz Cypress CY7C601 processor(s) ** Series5e: 40 MHz Cypress CY7C601 processor(s) ** Series6: 33 MHz SuperSPARC processor(s) ** Series6E: 50 MHz SuperSPARC processor(s) * Single-processor IDT (Integrated DeskTop) workstations based on the Panasonic MN10501 KAP SPARC-compatible processor: ** S3000: portable workstation with integrated plasma display ** S4000: 33 MHz CPU "pizza-box"-style desktop workstation ** S4000DX: 36 MHz S4000 with secondary processor cache

Operating systems

All Solbourne systems run OS/MP, a modified version of SunOS 4.1 supporting multiprocessor systems. The final release of OS/MP was 4.1D, corresponding to SunOS 4.1.3. , some work has been done in porting OpenBSD to Solbourne IDT workstations.

References

External links

Deloitte Consulting and Solbourne

Solbourne corporate website

Solbourne Shack Web Page (archive.org copy)

Floodgap Solbourne Solace
(with another copy of the Solbourne Shack pages) 2008 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1986 American companies disestablished in 2008 Computer companies established in 1986 Computer companies disestablished in 2008 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies SPARC microprocessor products {{US-manufacturing-company-stub