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our sister magazine: 
May 1998
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Applications
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HPCN industry
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Media and Visualization
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Belgium
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France
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Germany
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Italy
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Russia
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Switzerland
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the Netherlands
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| Einstein`s Gravitational Waves are simulated
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Gravitational Waves, predicted by Einstein, but never seen yet, will be simulated in a cross-Atlantic simulation on Friday May 1st. Involved will be a Cray T3E at the Konrad Zuse Instutite in Berlin and NCSA, Illionois. ATM connectivity will be established all the way between NCSA and Berlin, using STAR TAP, CANARIE, Teleglobe, DT Berkom, and the DFN networks.
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| Antitrust Federals Intervene in Alpha chip deal
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The US Federal Trade Commission has intervened in the Digital/Intel deal where Intel will
buy Digital's semiconductor operations which include the Alpha chip. The FTC was afraid that Intel
would get a monopoly position in
high performance chips. The FTC insists that Digital licenses its Alpha chip technology to third parties including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Samsung.
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| STACK database of gene sequences goes live
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From now on, scientists who are trying to establish a unified view of all the genes to be discovered in the human genome and their possible relationship to disease, are able to benefit from the public use of an exciting and useful tool, called STACK.
The National Centre for Genome Resources (NCGR) and the South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI), based at the University of the Western Cape, near Cape Town, have been closely working together to launch the Sequence Tag Alignment and Consensus Knowledgebase (STACK), a unique DNA sequence database.
STACK is being made publicly available through NCGR's Genome Sequence DataBase (GSDB), which is hosted in Santa Fe.
Pangea Systems Company is offering a commercial version of the data.
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| VRML strategy meets growing 3D-needs on the Internet
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The Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) is a language for describing multi-participant interactive simulations, which generates virtual worlds that are being networked via the global Internet and hyperlinked with the World Wide Web. The VRML Consortium as a non-profit organisation has received a mandate to develop and promote VRML as the open, ubiquitous standard for 3D content on the Web.
A new Executive Committee has just been elected to form Task Groups within the Consortium in order to lead the marketing and specification initiatives offering appropriate support for the continuing growth of 3D on the Internet.
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| Supercomputing 98 celebrates its 10 years
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The 10th edition of Supercomputing 98 will be held in Orlando, Florida, USA from 7 till
the 13th of November. SC98 focuses on networking, distributed computing,
data-intensive applications, supercomputing, scalable computing and
other emerging technologies. The call
for papers has been issued.
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| Chrysler bought an additional 500 Octane SI workstations
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Chrysler Corporation has purchased an additional 500 OCTANE/SI workstations.
The workstations will be used primarily for computer-aided design (CAD) applications.
Chrysler uses CATIA software from Dassault Systèmes, a Silicon Graphics third-party provider, for vehicle design. Chrysler used the workstations to design its next generation of sedans, including the 1998 Chrysler Concorde and Dodge Intrepid, the first paperless car designs.
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| Belgium nuclear buy Encore Real-Time systems
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Encore Computer Corporation announced that Electrabel of Belgium has purchased an additional $900K of Real-Time computer systems in support of its nuclear power plant systems training program. Electrabel has acquired an RSX node and an Alpha-based node forming an Encore Real-Time computer system to use in two nuclear power plant sites in Belgium. These nodes are interconnected with Reflective Memory, forming a homogeneous system.
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| Bull
to distribute NEC computers
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Bull and NEC have announced a partnership agreement under which Bull will be able to
distribute
SX-4 supercomputers in France .
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| Audi orders VPP300E for CAE applications
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Audi's new vector parallel system from SNI/Fujitsu will be equipped with 16 processors, providing
nearly 40 Gflop/s and 32 Gbyte of main memory. Audi will use the supercomputer for crash simulations and vibration analysis. This is the first VPP system to be installed in the European car manufacturing industry.
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| New Pentium II processors accelerate
SNI
workstations
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At the same time as Intel's announcement of the Pentium II processor-generation, SNI has introduced systems using this latest technology. In addition to their PC line, SNI uses the speed of the new processor generation in the workstation area to take the performance parameters of the two new Scenic 1000 and 1000 E models to a higher level. Applications, especially in the area of financial analysis, publishing and simulation, will profit from the faster clock rates and the 100 MHz front-side bus.
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| Siemens Nixdorf sells four CMOS/390s to Postbank Data
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Postbank Data, a subsidiary of Deutsche Postbank AG, has ordered four S150-30 BS2000 mainframes with CMOS/390 processors from Siemens Nixdorf. The first two systems are to be shipped
as early as June 1998. The next will follow at the beginning of August. In total the order is worth more than 10 million DM.
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| SAVE brings Fujitsu and SGI together
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On March 26 and 27, users of SAVE, SNI's user group
Scientific Computing (Fujitsu's VPP and SGI servers) and the
international Fujitsu Special Interest Group VPP-SIG met in Munich for
an information exchange. It was the first time so many participants came
together, largely due to the fact that the number of VPP installations increased during the last
months. SNI presented its new strategy for the research and education
market in Germany. Most of the sites gave a short report. Some of the
highlights of that meeting are discussed in this article.
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| Germany dominatesTop 500 Computer list
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Germany is the most important supercomputer country in Europe when we look at the TOP500 machines. Based on the November 1997 survey of the 500 most powerful machines in the world, Uwe Harms and Erich Strohmaier have analysed the German situation since the beginning of the TOP500. In the Primeur Analysis
section their longer back ground article can be found.
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| Supercomputing 97 defines New Frontiers of Computational Methodologies/ Article
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A key issue at the San Jose SC 97 Conference was the definition of new computational methodologies to take full advantage of the continuous advances in computing and networking technologies. Results from a Teraflops machine (Intel ASCI Red) were, for the first time, presented at the Conference while Virtual Distributed Environments showed their potentiality to reshape the way Science and and Engineering is performed. However, to testify a sort of HPC "identity crisis", none of the speeches in the Conference Technical Program was able to integrate the various trends in a coherent conceptual framework A "New Vision", which can propel Supercomputing in the new millenium with the same dynamism as in the past, is still to be defined.
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| SGI
visualizes sarcophagus at Tjernobyl
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The concrete sarcophagus at Tjernobyl urgently needs repair, but the site is unsafe for humans. In a Transatlantic project, NASA Pioneer technology, used in last year's Mars expedition, will be put to use. American scientists, along with the Ukrainians, are building a high-tech robotics and vision system to translate the situation at the former nuclear power plant into a virtual reality model, with the help of SGI. The aim is to analyze and ultimately repair the decaying structure. The mapping of the plant should start in November this year.
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| Swiss cooperate in supercomputer project
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Switzerland is preparing a research and development programme that will bring together research groups from the EPFL in Lausanne, the ETHZ Zurich and Supercomputing Systems Ltd. These parties will work on the realisation and commercialisation of a series of parallel machines. A first machine with 8 alpha 21164/500MHz processors is already installed. A second configuration will be based on the alpha 21264 (500 MHz, 1 Gflop/s) processor with 64 CPUs. Later on its successors will be used. The final product, a parallel machine with 256 processors of 4 Gflop/s and a total capacity of 1 Tflop/s, is foreseen for Q4/1999.
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| Dutch HPCN program fills in
white spots
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The Dutch Foundation HPCN, which is administering the Dutch HPCN programme, has announced an addition to fill in some white spots. Application of many particle models, large databases, web technology and material and medical topics, have been identified. The results of the funded projects and investment in the infrastructure will be disseminated.
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| KPN relinquishes share in Surfnet
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The government of the Netherlands is prepared to heavily subsidize Surfnet, the academic part of the Dutch internet infrastructure. The only obstacle is that KPN, the privatized former national telephone and mail company, owns 49 per cent of Surfnet. In order to benefit from the willingness of the government to fund its plans for 622 Mbps connections to, among others, the US backbone, Surfnet will have to lose its commercial shareholder. The promised sum of hundreds of millions of guilders is ultimately deriving from EC coffers, hence there are strict guidelines as to who can benefit, without questions being asked in Brussels.
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| Syllogic obtains patent for data mining in client/server environments
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Syllogic has been granted a patent for its innovative use of data mining techniques to manage client/server environments. By placing Java "agents" strategically throughout the system and having them report on the performance, the computers themselves can largely deal with the management of the system by themselves. The data mining software and the first libraries with Java agents that monitor the C/S environments are already on the market.
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| EU sees no problem with Compaq's Digital Equipment acquisition
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The European Commission has cleared Compaq to acquire Digital Equipment Corp because the combined operation's position in a fast developing and lightly competitive market
does not raise competition concerns. In particular important competitors, such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM were mentioned.
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| ECMA investigates
DRAM dumping
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The European Electronic Component Manufacturers Association is collecting data on imports from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan of dynamic random
access memory (DRAM) semiconductors, to see if there is dumping on the EU market. The data collection on imports of 4, 16, and 64 megabyte DRAMs is scheduled to be completed by early April and has been reported to the industry in the three countries involved. It could lead to a complaint to the European Commission by the EECA and the opening of an anti-dumping investigation. A complaint would be 2-3 months from here.
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| Network Magazine chooses Starfire as a "Product of the
year"
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Sun's Starfire server was named "Product of the
year" by Network Magazine in its April 1998 issue. The Starfire
running the Solaris operating environment, was chosen for its value and
significance to networking/IT executives and their enterprises. This is
the fifth award bestowed upon the Starfire server by industry
publications. Sun and the other "Product of the Year"
recipients will be honoured by Network Magazine at this year's Networld
+ Interop conference, May 3-8 in Las Vegas.
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| SGI strategic plan: back to core business and Intel
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Sillicon Graphics announced its strategic business plan. The main execution points are a stronger commitment to its core markets, a strategic relationship with Intel
in combining Intel processors and Windows NT with its existing IRIX products and an independent organization of its subsidiary MIPS.
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| Tandem says Himalaya servers are year 2000 ready
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Tandem claims its NonStop Himalaya servers, both hardware and
operating system, are Year 2000 ready. At the same time the company has also
started a corporate-sponsored effort to encourage Tandem Alliance
Partners to verify that their Himalaya-based applications are also Year
2000 compliant. Compaq announced its worldwide Year 2000 compliance program
in October 1997, when Compaq selected NSTL, an information technology
testing organization, to verify its commercial and consumer desktop
PCs, portable PCs, servers and workstations for Year 2000 readiness.
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| NAG announces Fortran 95 Compiler
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The Numerical Algorithms Group Limited (NAG) has announced the release of its Fortran 95 Compiler, fully supporting the latest Fortran 95 standard. New features include nested WHERE, masked ELSEWHERE, user-defined elemental procedures, default initialisation, enhancements to intrinsic functions and many other new features. Features that have been deleted or made obsolete by Fortran 95 are flagged by warning messages.
NAG has tracked the corrigenda to the Fortran 90 standard and these have been incorporated into NAGWare 95.
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| IBM and Dassault prepare new version of CATIA
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IBM and Dassault Systèmes will introduce the next generation of the CATIA Solutions, Version 5, later this year. The new product line for scaleable computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) solutions will have a choice of native Windows NT or UNIX environments. CATIA Version 5 is interoperable with and complements the existing CATIA Version 4.
The first release will be announced in the third quarter of 1998.
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| Clear skies for Logica and EUMETSAT
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Logica has won an internationally competitive tender for a 7.3 million ECU
contract with the European Meteorological Satellite Organisation. Logica will develop and install a new processing system for the Meteorological Products Extraction Facility (MPEF) to be used with the next generation of Meteosat satellites. They necessitate an improvement in processing power of twenty times the current system capacity.
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| Supercomputer engineered antitumour agents aid cancer therapy
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At the 89th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, BioNumerik Pharmaceuticals, a company based in San Antonio, Texas, presented the promising results of its preclinical studies on the antitumour activity of two supercomputer engineered small molecule agents, referred to as Karenitecins and BNP7787.
The strong correlation between actual experimental observations and the computational simulations, performed through innovative supercomputer programming and mechanism based approach, are paving the way to creative and inspiring pharmaceutical discovery and development.
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| ITIS'98 seeds
the new telemedical information society
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The ITIS'98 conferenc offered a three-day full immersion into the realms of the Telemedical Information Society.
East met west, south met north in lively discussions, assessing the current telemedical potential of the World Wide Web.
Some speakers surprised their colleagues with state-of-the-art applications, already implemented in day-to-day health care. Others warned the audience not to loose sight of the various obstacles yet to overcome, especially with regard to high-speed networking and permanent funding.
The overall impression however, left plenty of room for a message of hope and trust.
Chairman Andy Marsh properly concluded: "We can do it, so why don't we?"
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| SBS and Digital develop Alpha-based Avionics for aircraft
simulation
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SBS Technologies and Digital are developing an Alpha-based Digital
Avionics application for aircraft simulation. The system will combine
SBS 1553 PCI modules and SBS Bit 3 PCI-to-VME Adapters with an 64-bit
Alpha system. The Digital Avionics is based on the AlphaServer 4100
with up to four processors at 466 MHz or 533 MHz. The system will be
available before fall.
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| HP to upgrade Fortran 90 V2.0
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HP 9000 Exemplar S-and X-Class users can upgrade to Fortran 90
V2.0 on their SPP-UX-based systems
in early August. The new version
includes
parallel directives, performance tuning, fast math intrinsics, most of
Fortran 95 and nested-loop optimizations.
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| Naval Research Laboratory runs single system image
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According to SGI/Cray research the 128-processor Cray
Origin200 system recently installed at the Naval Research Laboratory is
successfully running a wide range of technical applications in a
single-system image environment.
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| German Waterways installs a Cray
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The Bundesanstalt für Wasserbau (BAW) in Hamburg, Germany, has installed a 32-processor Cray 174;
J90 vector supercomputer to better explore
the impact of planned constructive measures on sea waterways under tidal
influence such as the estuaries of the rivers Elbe, Weser and Ems.
The impact
of deepening a shipping channel, the construction of a storm tide barrier and
other technical interventions can be predicted faster and more precisely based
on improved models. The machine expands BAW's compute capacity for numerical modelling by a factor of 20.
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| EU support for
SME's finally shows encouraging results
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In the last two or three years much has been said and debated
about the effectiveness of the various actions undertaken by the
European Union ,and based on the practical use of advanced
computational tools and methodologies in favour of the Small and Medium
Industries,which, as everybody knows, are a key component of many
European economies.
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| Compaq gets into Internet business
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Making use of Tandem's knowledge of Internet applications
Compaq has introduced a range of products for the Internet. Recently Compaq took
over Tandem's Internet transaction processing applications, which
are based on the ProLiant and ProSignia servers on Microsoft Windows NT
and use Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition, a Web site environment
for developing and managing an E-commerce site, Microsoft SQL Server,
which serves as the repository for the merchants product catalogue, and
Compaq CarbonCopy 32, a remote management application. The products
will be available on April 27.
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| HP and SGI chop prices of workstations and servers
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HP has reduced the prices of its PA-RISC-based Unix system
technical workstations with up to 37 percent.The company also has
lowered the price of its HP VISUALIZE fx2 graphics subsystem by 33%.
SGI reduced the price of its Challenge server line by 30%. An
equivalent price reduction holds for MIPS R4400 and R10000 processor
upgrades to currently installed Challenge servers. The server line now
starts at $43,800 (U.S. list).
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| FORE signs distribution deal with Access Graphics
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FORE has signed a distribution agreement with Access Graphics,
a technical distributor of supercomputers. Under the terms of the
agreement, effective immediately, Access Graphics will offer FORE
Systems' high-end networking products based on asynchronous transfer
mode (ATM) technology through its reseller channels in the United
States and Canada.
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| Concurrent receives $1 million contract
for simulations
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STN Atlas Elektronik has purchased 16 Concurrent MAXIONS and real-time software for simulation training programs. STN bought the software to simulate tank combat environments. The MAXIONs will be networked to twelve simulators along a DIS FDDI network. Operational sequences, different weather conditions, the display of targets and effects, as well as the trainingscenario will be processed by the systems in real-time. Headquartered in Bremen, Germany, STN Atlas is a company in the field of electronics and systems technology. Divisions include Naval and Simulation Systems, Marine Electronics, and Land and Airborne Systems.
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| NEC provides new
remote service for overseas users
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NEC now offers a new remote computing service (RCS) using NEC's SX-4 supercomputer aimed primarily at overseas users. To provide the service, the company has connected its SX-4 model 32 to the Internet to provide supercomputer remote computing service to registered users. The SX-4 32 is a high end model of the SX-4 Series,
located at Fuchu Plant in Tokyo. The hourly rate for the service is US$100 per CPU, but discounts are available for service contracts of 100 hours or more.
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| Fujitsu completes Amdahl integration in Hong Kong and China
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Amdahl Corporation's operations in Hong Kong and China have been formally transferred and integrated with the local Fujitsu Hong Kong Limited (FHK).
FHK expects about $30 million additional sales toward year 2000 for Amdahl products. The take-over is made as a part of the acquisition Fujitsu formalized last September.
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| Oracle Express Server 6.1. for AIX version 4 available for IBM's RS/6000
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Oracle extended its on-line analytical processing (OLAP) capabilities of Express to IBM's RS/6000 family of products. The Oracle Express Server 6.1 enables thousands of users to perform and share their OLAP analyses throughout the enterprise and over the World Wide Web. The server can directly access a number of relational database systems, including Oracle and IBM DB/2. Express Server for AIX Version 4 is available immediately.
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| SGI appoints Vrolyk as senior vice president of server and supercomputing unit
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John R. "Beau" Vrolyk became senior vice president of
Sillicon Graphics Server and Supercomputing Business Unit. In his new position, Vrolyk will be responsible for strategic oversight of Origin servers and Cray supercomputers, as well as building Silicon Graphics' server market share. Vrolyk will report directly to Robert H. "Bo" Ewald, executive vice president, Computer Systems, Silicon Graphics.
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| US Vice President unveiled IP network Abilene
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US Vice President Al Gore recently unveiled Abilene, a far-reaching research and education Internet Protocol (IP) network. The network is being developed by the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), through access to the US wide Qwest fiber optic network and technologies provided by Cisco Systems and Nortel (Northern Telecom). The research and education network will become the most advanced US IP backbone network available to universities participating in UCAID's Internet2 project. Initial operation is expected before the end of this year.
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| Fujitsi agrees to sell Solaris software to enter Unix on Intel market
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Fujitsu and Sun Microsystems signed an agreement whereby Fujitsu will sell and support Sun Solaris software for networking systems on Intel architecture-based servers. The companies agreed to collaborate on promoting, enhancing and supporting the Solaris operating environment. They will also jointly work on the Solaris software to fully exploit Intel based computers, including the Merced microprocessor when it is available. Shipment of Solaris on Intel is expected to be in the 2nd half of 1998.
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| Sillicon Graphics expects significant loss
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Silicon Graphics currently expects revenue and earnings for the quarter ending March 31, 1998, to be significantly below
expectations. The Company will incur a significant loss based on
expected revenue of approximately $700 million. The company expects to
announce its actual results for the quarter at the close of the market
on April 21, 1998.
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| Microsoft licenses TriTech's bump-mapping for sharper 3D
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Microsoft intends to license TriTech's bump-mapping technology
for use in future versions of the Microsoft DirectX set of APIs,
beginning with DirectX 6.0. Bump-mapping is a graphics technique that
helps create realistic three-dimensional graphics effects. TriTech
first developed its bump-mapping technology as part of its Pyramid3D
family of 3-D graphics accelerators introduced in 1997.
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| Microsoft has to explore Internet without Sun
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A U.S. District Court judge granted Sun's request for a
preliminary injunction that prevents Microsoft from using Sun's Java
Compatible logo to promote and distribute its Internet Explorer 4.0 and
related products. Sun sued Microsoft on Oct. 7, 1997, alleging that
Microsoft has improperly modified the Java technology incorporated in
Internet Explorer 4.0 and is infringing Sun's trademark by distributing
Internet Explorer 4.0 and related products using the Java Compatible
Logo.
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| Modification of floating point calculations will sweeten Java
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Sun has proposed to its Java platform licensees a modification
to the Java programming language and Java virtual machine
specifications. The modification would amend the way the Java platform
handles floating point calculations. Sun developed the proposed
modification with input from several companies, including IBM, Intel
and SuperCede. Once the Java platform licensees have reviewed and
commented on the proposal, Sun will incorporate their feedback and then
open it to public review, which is expected to begin May 1.
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| First for
Virtual Environments Facility in Stuttgart
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The Virtual Environments Lab (VELab) at the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) will be inaugurated on
28 April 28. Together with the Visualization Lab
and the Video Lab it is operated as a service facility. It is tightly connected to two other Virtual Reality Labs at the University of Stuttgart as well as to the Daimler Benz Virtual Reality Arbeitsplatz (DB-VIRA). This establishes a testbed for Distributed Virtual Environments applied to engineering sciences, that is unique in the world.
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| Bergen
BSSI becomes
centre of excellence
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NAG has appointed Bergen Software Services International A/S (BSSI) as an IRIS Explorer
Centre of Excellence, in recognition of their success and expertise using NAG's IRIS Explorer data visualisation package to develop commercial software products in the Energy and Environment sectors.
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| Newsbreakers benefit from Philips and SGI deal
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Philips Digital Video Systems Company and SGI announced
a strategic alliance to develop mission-critical solutions for the worldwide broadcasting community. Philips will incorporate SGI platforms and software in their video server products for professional broadcasters. The Philips branded products and applications which include: "On-Air" scheduling and playback, broadcast news editing; and digital asset browsing and management will be on display at NAB '98 in Las Vegas.
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| SGI renders service to major entertainment companies
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At the National Association of Broadcasters conference,
entertainment companies, including Cinesite, Industrial Light &
Magic, MTV, Panasonic and Philips officially announced they would use SGI's
Origin2000 and 200 server systems or rendering technology. SGI also
reported up to 35% performance increases for rendering applications
that run on its recently introduced 250 MHz MIPS R10000 Origin server
systems and a successful technology test of a telephone line-based
transmission of digital high-definition TV.
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| CNN and MTV switches on to SGI entertainment
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SGI has formed an Entertainment Professional Services Team to provide technology consulting services for film studios, post-production and visual effects houses, and interactive media centers. It also provides technology services for the production, graphics and distribution needs of traditional, cable and satellite broadcasters. Customers include CNN, Lucasfilm and MTV, Music Television.
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| Hongkong launches first interactive multimedia service
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Hongkong Telecom has launched commercial services of its
interactive multimedia service named "iTV Service". This full
implementation of the service costing $1.5 billion follows preliminary
trials which have been in operation in Hong Kong since July 1997. It is
the first such project in the world to launch the services full-scale.
Included are Video On Demand, Music on Demand, Home Shopping, and
Racing on Demand. Home Banking and Broadband Internet will be available
in the near future.
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