SRC Computers Inc, the company formed by Seymour Cray just before his death in October 1996 (CI No 2,970; 3,015), continues to work on the initial ideas of its founder. It is planning a line of supercomputer systems based around Intel Corp microprocessor technology and its own low-latency memory subsystem, hears the Electronic Engineering Times. Privately-held SRC, based in Colorado Springs, is currently keeping a low-profile, but told the paper that its first product, aimed at the scientific and engineering markets, will be called the SRC-6. The initial design uses Intel’s Pentium Pro processor line, but the 64-bit Merced iA64 is said to be under evaluation for future use. SRC’s main concern is to balance the power of CPU, I/O throughput and memory subsystems. It also wants to balance the software elements of a high performance operating system with parallization, compiler and library technology, and to provide a common platform for parallel vector processing and massively parallel processing- based applications. A public announcement is still months away, the company said. But the plans suggest that SRC will be fighting head-to-head with Seymour Cray’s old company, Cray Research Inc, now of course owned by Silicon Graphics Inc. Last week, SGI outlined the future of its four current supercomputing product lines, the Origin 2000, Cray J90, Cray T90 and Cray T3E (CI No 3,389). These will be converged over time into two closely related successor lines. The T90 and J90s will be merged into the scalable vector line of SV1 and SV2 systems, using at least some level of Intel technology, while the Origin and Cray T3E will be merged into a highly scalable microprocessor-based systems using Intel’s Merced chip. Further out, those two lines are expected to be consolidated into a single line of systems.
