The Bracknell, Berkshire-based UK end of FPS Computing – the Beaverton, Oregon company still much better known as Floating Point Systems Inc – has added the latest of Stellar Computer Inc’s variants on its GS1000 graphics supercomputers presumably the DS1000 launched in April (CI No 1,150), acquired under FPS’ OEM contract with the Newton, Massachusetts company. Offered as lower end departmental computers running Unix System V.3, the Models 300X and 300SX servers start at UKP92,000 for a basic configuration with 32Mb of memory expandable up to 128Mb. Using Stellar’s multi-processor architecture the 300X is claimed to offer up to 25 MIPS and 80 MFLOPS. The 300SX has a scalar accelerator option which boosts performance to 35 MIPS and 100 MFLOPS. The 350X and 350SX workstations, which start at UKP109,000, offer improved graphics capability – animation of up to 30 frames per second – with PHIGS+ 3D, GKS and the revolutionary Stellar Application Visualisation System (CI No 1,156), which the UK announcement disingenuously seems to try to pass off as FPS’ own product. These dual display systems can be configured simultaneously with a high resolution graphics display and a video monitor. Both the Model 300 and 350 series come with TCP/IP, Network File System and Ethernet, and can be connected to the FPS 500 mid-range Unix supercomputer – the 64 bit machine that is based on the technology FPS acquired with the assets of Celerity – as front-ends.
