Good as its word last December (CI No 830), Control Data Corp’s ETA Systems has duly run through the clever projects submitted by US high schools for running on a supercomputer, decided that the best was one of the four submitted by a team from the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology in Annandale, Virginia, and awarded the $1m ETA 10-P supercomputer put up as the prize, to the school. The winning project was a challenging effort by Manish Tuteja, 16, to find the roots of equations, and another project from the school, to explore means of using computer resources more efficiently, was also commended. The machine comes with its own on-site support person for the first two years, but thereafter the school is on its own. It is forbidden to sell time on the ETA 10, at least until 1990, but this restriction may be lifted thereafter so that it can cover the operating cost – about $100,000 a year.
