HPE NonStop (originally Tandem) has a nearly 50-year history as the gold standard for fault-tolerant, “always-on” computing. Originally developed by Tandem Computers to eliminate single points of failure, the platform has survived through several major corporate acquisitions while evolving its underlying processor architecture.
Founding and The Tandem Era (1974–1997)
The “NonStop” architecture was born from the idea that a single hardware failure should never crash a system.
- 1974: Tandem Computers is founded by Jimmy Treybig and three former HP engineers.
- 1976: The first Tandem/16 (later NonStop I) is shipped to Citibank. It featured a “shared-nothing” architecture where each CPU had its own memory and copy of the Guardian OS.
- 1981: NonStop II is released, introducing 32-bit addressing to support larger applications.
- 1983: The NonStop TXP and Pathway software are introduced. Pathway revolutionized the platform by allowing programmers to write fault-tolerant apps without manually coding “checkpoints”.
- 1986: NonStop SQL is launched, the first fault-tolerant relational database.
- 1989: NonStop Cyclone arrives, a high-end mainframe-class system.
- 1991–1993: Transition to MIPS RISC processors begins with the Cyclone/R and the Himalaya K-series.
Corporate Acquisitions and Transition (1997–2014)
The platform changed hands twice in five years, but the mission-critical nature of the technology kept it alive.
- 1997: Compaq acquires Tandem for $3 billion to bolster its enterprise server offerings.
- 1997: The Himalaya S-Series introduces ServerNet, a high-speed interconnect that later evolved into the industry-standard InfiniBand.
- 2002: HP merges with Compaq, bringing the NonStop line under Hewlett-Packard.
- 2005: NonStop i (Integrity) is launched, transitioning from MIPS to Intel Itanium processors.
The Modern HPE Era (2015–Present)
Today, the platform focuses on integrating with modern data centre standards like x86 and cloud-native virtualisation.
- 2014–2015: NonStop X (TNS/X) is introduced, moving the architecture to industry-standard Intel x86-64 processors.
- 2015: HP splits; the server line becomes part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).
- 2017: Virtualised NonStop (vNS) is released, allowing the software stack to run in virtual machines (KVM/OpenStack).
- 2020: HPE officially ends sales of Itanium-based systems, completing the transition to x86.
- 2024: The platform celebrates its 50th anniversary, continuing to power the majority of the world’s ATM and credit card transactions.
HPE NonStop Tandem Timeline History
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