Advanced ECL technology in supermini

AdvancedECLtechnologyin supermini Competition in the high performance supermini marketing is becoming very keen. Harris Corporation is the latest company to launch a new machine, claimed to outperform all others that have gone before. Harris has produced benchmark figures for its Harris 1000 supermini which give it the lead in single processor performance. In Whetstone testing the single processor reached 4 MIPS in single precision, and 3.7 MIPS in double precision. On this basis Harris claims its new machine is faster than the Gould SEL 32187, Data General’s MVilOOO, IBM’s 4381 and DEC’s Vax 111782. Even Prime’s recently announced 9950 is said by Harris to achieve less than 2.5 MIPS in Whetstone single processor testing. The reason for this increased performance is the use

of 1OOK ECL integrated circuits, rather than 10K ECL ICs, which the other machines use. This gives greater switching speeds. Frank Walters, general manager for Harris in the UK, says that the competition will probably be introducing this technology in the near future. It was, he says, surprising that the Prime machine did not use it. Other features of the Harris 1000 include hardware-implemented floating point, and precision in 32148164196 bits, according to needs. Microcode is held in RAM rather than PROM, which Harris believes makes field upgrading simpler. The Harris 1000 is the top end of the Harris range of minis, and can be field-upgraded from other members of the family. A usable configuration costs about &300000. Harris will be looking to sell into its estab-

lished market base, in education, R&D and construction and engineering. It also intends to expand into the aerospace industry. Although the machine is not intended for commercial markets, it is being geared towards the ‘hybrid’ market. Alexis Sozonoff, vice president and general manager of the international division, explains that in Europe particularly there is a need for machines which can perform scientific, engineering work, and be able to handle

the company administration. For this purpose Harris is acquiring software packages such as database software and project management to fulfil the needs of the hybrid market. (Harris Corporation, Computer Systems Division, 2101 Cypress Creek Road, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309, USA. Tel: (305) 974 1700. Harris Systems Ltd, Information Systems International Division, PO Box 27, 153 Farnham Road, Slough SLI 4XD, UK. Tel: (0753) 0 34666.)

The 1000 uses ECL ICs to achieve a 4 MIPS Whetstone speed.

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data processing