SGS Thomson Microelectronics NV has called last orders on its T9000 Transputers and passed responsibility for support and service of the T9000’s few remaining customers to London-based massively parallel processing manufacturer Parsys Ltd. Meanwhile, even Parsys is continuing its journey away from the T9000 towards conventional RISC architecture, doing precisely what it said it wouldn’t do in 1994. In the end, it seems the T9000 simply wasn’t popular enough as a stand alone product to support a production line, and SGS Thomson decided it was no longer a viable product. It has played down the T9000’s demise, saying it’s just another product that didn’t quite make it, and assures us the transputer market is still very much alive and kicking, with ST20 products being used in GPS Global Positioning by Satellite set-top boxes. SGS Thomson claims the deal with Parsys will ensure that those few T9000 remaining customers will not be left high and dry, and says it is confident the existing user base will move to Parsys for continued support and service. Hard to see what choice they’d have really. While it is obviously not expecting any new customers, Parsys is expecting plenty of interest from those customers who have already planned T9000 strategies. Parsys is also taking the opportunity to try to encourage interest in its new Windows NT/Unix workstation range, which uses Digital Equipment Corp’s 64-bit Alpha RISC processor with clock speeds up to 500 MHz. The workstations are targeted at the transputer space of Finite Element Analysis, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Elecromagnetic Analysis, Image Processing and Statistical Analysis applications, and are available with Windows NT, Digital Unix or Linux ready-loaded. Bundled systems start at 4,000 pounds, UK price.
