A deal announced Tuesday between Unisys Corp. and NEC Corp. to produce high-end servers may lead to a migration from the mainframe ClearPath CMOS processor to Intel-based chips.

Road maps won"t be finalized until the agreement with NEC is completed in the first quarter of 2006, and any migration away from CMOS will depend on Intel Corp."s ability to provide a processor that delivers performance at least as good as the CMOS chip, said Guy Esnouf, a spokesman for Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys.

"Obviously, we"re not going to do anything until we"re happy the Intel processor technology is where it needs to be," said Esnouf. "We foresee a time when customers will be able to make that switch without any degradation of performance. In time, we would plan that ClearPath would run on Intel rather than on the current CMOS. But we"re not going there now."

Esnouf also said that if customers want to stay on CMOS, "that"s where they will stay -- we"re not going to try to force them off."

In making the announcement, NEC and Unisys said they had signed a memorandum of understanding to negotiate a partnership and collaborate in research and development.