Advanced ECL technology in supermini Competition in the high per- formance supermini marketing

is becoming very keen. Harris Corporation is the latest com- pany to launch a new machine, claimed to outperform all others that have gone before.

Harris has produced bench- mark 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 pre- cision, 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 in- creased performance is the use

of 1OOK ECL integrated cir- cuits, rather than 10K ECL ICs, which the other machines use. This gives greater switch-

ing speeds. Frank Walters, general manager for Harris in the UK, says that the competi- tion will probably be introduc- ing this technology in the near

future. It was, he says, surpris- ing that the Prime machine did not use it.

Other features of the Harris 1000 include hardware-imple-

mented 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-

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

lished market base, in educa- tion, R&D and construction and engineering. It also in-

tends to expand into the aero- space industry.

Although the machine is not intended for commercial mar- kets, it is being geared towards the ‘hybrid’ market. Alexis Sozonoff, vice president and

general manager of the inter- national 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 mar- ket. (Harris Corporation, Com-

puter Systems Division, 2101

Cypress Creek Road, Fort Lau-

derdale, FL 33309, USA. Tel:

(305) 974 1700. Harris Systems

Ltd, Information Systems Inter-

national Division, PO Box 27,

153 Farnham Road, Slough

SLI 4XD, UK. Tel: (0753)

34666.) 0

46 data processing