The Sun Microsystems Inc Sparc reduced instruction set processor has racked up an unprecendented number – and variety – of design wins in the short time that it has been on offer, and the latest to take a licence for the Sparc is a Colorado Springs start-up planning to build a scientific supercomputer in Gallium Arsenide. Prisma Inc says it is developing a very high-speed supercomputer class system using leading-edge supercomputer technology and design techniques for shipment in late 1989, with beta testing set for summer 1989. It will use the Sparc architecture in its GaAs-based processor with a racy 4nS cycle time, which as well as very high speed – a peak execution speed of 250 MIPS, is being designed to provide exceptionally fast interrupt service for input-output and real-time applications. Prisma is also licensing all the Sun software it needs to make the machine compatible with other Sparc implementations, including the SunOS 4 version of Unix, C and Fortran compilers, and Network File System.
