Osaka-based Matsushita Electric Industrial Co has revealed plans to develop its own high performance computer systems based on the Sun Sparc RISC processor for products aimed at the Unix systems market and embedded controller markets in Japan (CI No 1,570). Although Matsushita is the majority shareholder in Longmont, Colorado-based Solbourne Computer Corp, Matshushita is carrying out is own development work on the new machines, and in the meantime plans to buy in around $150m of Sparcstation products from Sun to use internally and sell through its distribution channels in Japan over the next three years. Among the plans for new hardware are desktop and laptop Sparc systems incorporating multi-media technology and running the Japanese version of Sun’s SunOS version of Unix, the Sun ONC networking technology and Open Look graphical user interface – and Matsushita promises the products will conform to Sparc International’s Sparc Compliance Definition compatibility standard. On the embedded side, Matsushita plans to use the Sparc in its consumer electronics products, a sector where it is market leader. Matsushita has developed its own 64-bit implementation of the Sparc processor, currently used by Solbourne in its latest S4000.
