Further details have now emerged on the forthcoming Tri Dimensional – or Tri-D – family of minicomputers to be announced by AEG AG’s Modular Computer Corp, ModComp, at the end of the month (CI No 1,006) – and instead of bandying MIPS with the old hands at that game, ModComp will be stressing the real-time performance of the new family, measured by the rate at which it handles interrupts and the input-output throughput, as well as the raw processing power. Succeeding the Classic 32 line, the Tri-D machines will run ModComp’s existing MAX IV and MAX 32, and its Realix real-time Unix operating systems. The three new models are the Tri-D 9230, 9235 and 9250, the two smaller ones being rated at 2.5 MIPS on the single precision Whetstone benchmark, the 9250 being rated at 5.1 MIPS. Interrupt handling is rated at over 100,000 interrupts a second. Input-output throughput is rated at up to 8.8Mbytes-per-second with two input output sequencer, IOS, I boards, 12Mbps with two IOS II boards; the 9230 has the IOS I boards, the 9235 the IOS II. ModComp has gone to VLSI Technology Inc for the core of its new processor, the 98010 instruction set processor, and the machine crams that, a standard cell, two arrays, a map cache controller and a data cache controller, onto a single board for the 9230 and 35. The 9250 adds a third array and a second data cache controller for a total of 64Kb cache memory. There is an optional IEEE 754 floating point accelerator supported by the MAX 32 and Realix real-time operating systems which is claimed to increase performance to 5.1 MIPS on the 9250 and to 2.5 MIPS on the smaller two models. MAX IV J.0 is supported on the new machines, but only MAX 32 and Real ix support SCSI disks. The Maxnet 32 Distributed System for network ing is available as an extension to MAX 32, enabling all models of the new line, plus Classic and Classic II systems to be networked togeth er. No indication of prices yet.
