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).

Later they introduced a next-generation high-end platform for UNIX and Windows NT based on a non-uniform memory access architecture, NUMA-Q.

As hardware prices fell in the late 1990s, and Intel shifted their server focus to the Itanium processor family, Sequent joined the Project Monterey effort in October 1998, which aimed to move a standard Unix to several new platforms.

[6][7][8][9][10] Originally named Sequel,[11] Sequent was formed in 1983[12] when a group of seventeen engineers and executives left Intel after the failed iAPX 432 "mainframe on a chip" project was cancelled; they were joined by one non-Intel employee.

They began investing in the development of a system based on a cache-coherent non-uniform memory architecture (ccNUMA) and leveraging Scalable Coherent Interconnect.

Known internally as STiNG, an abbreviation for Sequent: The Next Generation (with Intel inside), it was productized as NUMA-Q[23] and was the last of the systems released before the company was purchased by IBM for over $800 million.

IBM then started Project Monterey with Santa Cruz Operation, intending to produce a NUMA-capable standardized Unix running on IA-32, IA-64 and POWER and PowerPC platforms.

According to a May 30, 2002 article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) entitled "Sequent Deal Serves Hard Lesson for IBM": The following is a more detailed description[27] of the first two generations of Symmetry products, released between 1987 and 1990.