Sequent Computer Systems

Sequent Computer Systems, or Sequent, was a computer company that designed and manufactured multiprocessing computer systems. They were among the pioneers in high-performance symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) open systems, innovating in both hardware (e.g. cache management and interrupt handling) and software (e.g. read-copy-update). In July 1999 Sequent agreed to be acquired by IBM. Sequent's first computer systems were the Balance 8000 (released in 1984) and Balance 21000 (released in 1986).