Santa Clara, California-based Integrated Information Technology Inc, best known for its maths co-processor technology, is making a play for the data compression market, with two XtraDrive disk compression products that double the hard disk capacity of personal computers, the company claims. Ready to ship in five weeks’ time, the products are a hardware-based and a software-based data compression package. The hardware-based product – a 16-bit AT expansion board with a built-in data compression chip and on-board memory – is aimed at users with a minimum 80286-based desktop personal computer, who seek an easy way of upgrading their on-average 40Mb hard disk, to use Windows for example, without having to open up the machine and swap the thing for a new one: for just $260, Integrated Information offers a board-level package that doubles the internal memory capacity transparently. The software-based package, somewhat cheaper at $130, but providing 20% to 30% less speed and a slightly inferior compression ratio, is aimed at notebook users requiring more than 40Mb system memory. The software version requires 25Kb of system memory and can be loaded into high memory. Both products support only MS-DOS and MS-Windows Integrated Information product manager Robert Seltzer notes that one of the main factors hindering the mass market take-off of data compression technology is the limitation that products have to be individually designed for each operating system; he reckons it will be three to five years before it is possible to design operating system-independent data compression products, at which point the technology will be included as an integral part of every computer system shipped. Integrated Information plans to have versions of its products for Unix and Novell Inc NetWare within nine months, but is hesitant about jumping to support OS/2 – IBM Corp is apparently introducing data compression features to OS/2 release 2.0. Integrated Information was founded just five years ago, by the same people that founded maths co-processor specialist Weitek Corp. It is a private company with 120 employees which turned over $28m in the year to March 31, 1991. The company’s European headquarters are in Marlow, Buckinghamshire in the UK, and the company distributes its products here through DMST Ltd, based in Newbury, Berkshire.
