Gould Computer Systems, the Fort Lauderdale, Florida minimaker whose future parentage is in doubt following the acquisition of Gould Inc by Nippon Mining Co, which has indicated that it is not sure it wants to keep the business, is keeping the wheels turning to ensure that it is worth having if the time comes for it to be sold. The company has upgraded its range of Concept 32/2000 family of real-time minicomputer systems, including a top-end model said to be the world’s fastest real-time computer. The 32/2040 features main memory which has a cycle time that matches CPU speed – effectively 100% cacheing – which provides deterministic performance. The system uses fast access time static random access memory chips to provide a close coupling of processor and memory, using a new high performance bus providing bandwidth of 293Mbytes-per-second – although SELbus compatibility with previous Concept hardware has been retained. Real-time features, including directly connected interrupts and interval times, have been added directly on the single-board VLSI CMOS processor board, which includes integrated floating point hardware, and according to Gould, RISC-like technology reduces the number of cycles to an average of 1.4 cycles per instruction. Running Gould’s MPX-32 real-time operating system, a real-time Bare Machine Ada, or Gould’s UTX/32 Unix implementation, the Concept 32/2000 offers Ada, Fortran, and a range of programming tools. Aimed directly at the simulation marketplace, the Concept family will consist of three models, the 32/2020, 2030 and 2040, and will be commercially available in the third quarter of 1989.
