Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp, Salt Lake City, Utah has thrown in the towel on its brave effort to diversify into supercomputers with the moderately parallel ES-1, and says it will close the business down if it can’t find a buyer or partner for it in 60 days. Part of the reason is that the firm has run into hardware and software problems on the ES-1 and it says it also finds that its competitive advantage is less than it had expected. If the operation is terminated, the graphics systems specialist will report a one-time loss of up to $14m including the costs of closing the operation and writing down the assets. If it does find a partner, it will take a number of months to make needed changes to the big machine.
