Intel Corp’s Intel Scientific Computers in Beaverton, Oregon has enlisted the aid of Verdix Corp, Chantilly, Virginia in the implementation of the Verdix Ada Development System environment on Intel Scientific’s iPSC/2 Concurrent Supercomputer: Intel hopes that full Ada support on the hypercube machine makes it a highly desirable platform for large scale Ada programs such as those being pursued for the US Strategic Defense Initiative, the space station, and for Battle Management/Command, Communication, Control and Intelligence systems; the iPSC/2 already supports Lisp, Fortran and C languages. Given that there is a substantial population of computers in the Soviet Union and that they are still used almost exclusively for scientific and technical applications, it is clear that there must be a body of pretty nifty mathematical software there, and if the Soviet prowess at chess is any guide, much of it is likely to be as good as, and almost certainly much more efficient than, equivalent software in the US, Europe and Japan – and the Soviets are now keen to share it with the West in return for hardware and commercial software technology: the tour of the US by Soviet computer officials that took in MicroPro International Inc and Datapoint Corp last month has led to MicroPro people going to Moscow to push forward the initiative for a Russian version of WordStar, according to the Financial Times, Borland International Inc is hopeful of selling products in the USSR, and there is even gossip of joint design of a 32-bit microprocessor for the Comecon countries that would initially be fabricated in the US and exported to the USSR.
