Fujitsu claims a memory latency (ie. response time) of four times that of local memory, compared with 16-plus times for a comparable Data General or Sequent system. Synfinity at the moment can be used to allow customers to buy a four-way system which can be upgraded to eight by simply adding another four-way box and a Synfinity interconnect, whereas 'future-proofing' schemes that are being offered by the likes of HP effectively involve swapping-out the machine. Currently the Synfinity eight-way server is being offered in a NUMA SMP configuration, but early next year it will be available in the form of a PCI card VI-based high speed node interconnect. It will also be produced in router-type configuration, and basically it will be possible for customers to mix and match, using multi-processor boxes plus clustering to produce massively scalable systems, still using commodity components. That could mean 32-way by 2000, and clustered configurations supporting far larger number of CPUs. ® Click for more stories.