Tandem Computers
More info
- Creator
- Jimmy Treybig
- Released
- 1974
- Owner
- Compaq (1997), HP (2002)
- Type
- Fault-tolerant computers
Computers built never to stop, which is why so many of them are still humming away in bank basements.
Jimmy Treybig left HP in 1974 and founded Tandem in Cupertino on a simple premise: every component comes in pairs, every process has a shadow on another CPU, and no single failure should ever be visible from outside. The first NonStop system shipped in 1976 and became the default for ATM networks, card payments and stock exchanges, places where a minute of downtime costs more than the hardware.
Jim Gray worked there and helped create NonStop SQL (1987), one of the first distributed relational databases. Tandem also bought Atalla in 1987. Compaq acquired it in 1997 and took it along into HP in 2002. The architecture is still sold as HPE NonStop, these days on x86.