Pyramid Technology
More info
- Released
- 1981–1995
- Type
- Minicomputers, Unix servers
- Successor
- Acquired by Siemens Nixdorf
A Californian company that shipped one of the first commercial RISC machines, and settled the Unix wars by simply running both sides at once.
Founded in Mountain View in 1981, Pyramid launched the 90x in 1983: a minicomputer built around an in-house RISC processor, years before MIPS and SPARC reached the market. The machines found a following as database servers and as hubs for early email and Usenet traffic.
What people remember is OSx and its two "universes": every process could choose to see either a BSD or a System V environment, each with its own commands and libraries. It was a pragmatic answer to customers who insisted on both. Competition from the workstation vendors proved too much, and Siemens Nixdorf bought Pyramid in 1995.