Intel Corp’s forthcoming 6m transistor P6 successor to the Pentium is to have four integer execution units – arithmetic-logic units, compared with two in the Pentium, which will require it to work rather like a chess program, looking many moves ahead and speculatively executing many instructions that might be needed; using data flow analysis, it will also look at the code coming into the processor and analyse it to minimise data dependencies; it may also add some instructions to the set in the Pentium; initially to be clocked at 133MHz, the P6 will not be pin-compatible with the Pentium in its first iteration; it is expected to have a 32Kb first-level cache and a 256Kb or 512Kb second-level cache integrated with the processor.
Cap Volmac Group NV, majority-owned by CAP Gemini Sogeti SA, is selling its 49% stake in CAP debis VFC to Daimler-Benz AG’s debis Systemhaus GmbH, which has held the remaining 51% since 1993: debis Systemhaus will combine its Benelux facilities management activities in one unit.no financial details were given.
Graseby Plc’s Graseby Intertest Ltd has a licensing deal worth ú900,000 in the first year with Anritsu Corp of Japan under which Anritsu, a maker of quality control systems for the food industry, will be exclusive licensee and distributor in Japan for Graseby’s high speed X-ray CDX quality management system for use by the food processing and pharmaceutical industries to detect foreign bodies such as glass, stone and bone: the deal is for an initial five years, renewable for a further 10 years.
MCI Communications Inc has filed a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission, alleging that Pacific Telesis Group Inc’s Pacific Bell unit is repeatedly and illegally, denying thousands of its California business and government customers the right to choose a competitive phone company for local toll call service as of January 1.
St Petersburg, Florida-based Jabil Circuit Inc has filed a breach of contract complaint against Epson America Inc on grounds that in September 1993, it entered into an agreement with Epson for joint development of a custom notebook computer – Epson was to define, market and sell the notebook while Jabil designed and manufactured it; production has been repeatedly delayed due to shortages of plastic parts from third party suppliers.
The Prodigy Services Co joint venture between IBM Corp and Sears, Roebuck & Co will offer its Internet browser software free to members with Prodigy software for Windows, who will thereby gain access to electronic mail, Usenet news groups and the full World Wide Web.
Portugal’s cabinet has approved plans to privatise a first tranche of state telecommunications group Portugal Telecom shortly by direct sale to a group of financial institutions and a stock exchange offering directed at the general public, but it has not announced what proportion of the capital would be offered or give any pricing details: the government’s 51% stake in external telecommunications company Companhia Portuguesa Radio Marconi SA is to be transferred to Portugal Telecom before privatisation begins; private shareholders controlling the remaining 49% of Marconi will be allowed to swap their Marconi shares for Portugal Telecom shares on favourable terms later as the government hopes to increase the monopoly by including the whole of Marconi in its privatisation of Portugal Telecom.
Thrifty Tel Inc, a Los Angeles long distance service company, has filed for reorganisation under Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code because the terms for a potential investment by Licklider Group were never reached and negotiations towards such a definitive agreement are not in progressl; the firm is suffering losses and cash-flow difficulties and has also discovered that it had failed to pay some state and federal excise taxes that it was obliged to collect from its customers; it warns that a successful reorganisation would require the agreement of tax authorities to accept less than the maximum taxes, penalties and
interest that they could assess.
Qatar plans to spend $93.6m in 1995 to boost its telecommunications and link up with a Gulf underwater cable: the 1995 plans include adding 80,000 new lines to the existing 300,000 and connecting to the Gulf fibre optic cable network; work on the $90m cable connecting Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait is due to start this year; Qatar’s share in the project will be $21m; the cable, which is expected to be operational in 1997, will eventually link the four Gulf states to the Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-2 cable, the world’s longest underwater fibre optic telecommunications cable that links 13 countries.
PanAmSat Corp has signed the Russo-American Lockheed-Khrunichev-Energia joint venture to a $90m contract to launch a series of communications satellites: the satellites will be launched by a Russian Proton carrier whose technical characteristics were more in accordance with PanAmSat’s needs than those of the Ariane rocket; the first Proton rocket carrying a PanAamSat bird will be launched in 1996 from the Baikonur space base in Kazakhstan.
Cable & Wireless Plc found a similar series of tunnels in London for its Mercury Communications Ltd phone network, and Bombay is set to leap from the late 19th Century to the 21st in terms of telephony: a US-based Indian businessman has bought a 344-mile long underground gas pipeline, lying unused for many years under Bombay, and is planning to convert it into an advanced cable television network linking half a million households and offices across the city; the pipeline, laid 25 years ago, was bought for around $200m by Mark Mascarenhas, who owns World Tel Inc, a television company based in Connecticut; he bought the pipeline through his newly-floated company, Prism Electro-communications Ltd, from the Bombay Gas Co Ltd, Reuter reports.
Struggling San Antonio, Texas-based Intelogic Trace Inc said MCI Communications Corp decided not to renew its contract for the sale of equipment and nationwide installation and ongoing support of its Call Director program: the contract, which expired on December 31, will recognise $4.5m in revenues, instead of the $7m the company had projected to earn from the contract for the fiscal 1995 year to July.
Ricoh Co, one of the more acquisitive Japanese companies, has signed a definitive agreement to buy copier disctributor Savin Corp for $41.5m cash, subject to adjustment.
Manhasset, New York-based Spectrum Information Technologies Inc, where John Sculley had a brief berth, has finally found a chief executive, naming Donald Amoruso to the post; Spectrum says it has also named an entirely new board of directors.
Bloomington, Minnesota-based Network Communications Corp has agreed to surrender the name LANalyzer, a local network analyser, to Novell Inc and change the product name to LAN Network Probe; it is also paying Novell an undisclosed sum.
Unisys Corp has won a five-year contract, potentially worth $100m to provide agency-wide information systems maintenance and support services to the US Department of Justice; services to be provided include maintenance on multi-vendor mid-range and personal computers, including those of IBM Corp and Data General Corp; the contract also includes professional services and end-user support services.
Fore Systems Inc will supply Asynchronous Transfer Mode technology for a phase of Microsoft Corp’s and Tele-Communications Inc’s joint interactive broadband network test in Redmond, Washington: the switches will be integrated into the network to consolidate multiple video streams and data; the network is scheduled to go on-line in the current quarter; no terms disclosed.
Electronic Data Systems Corp yesterday announced formation of a joint venture with Deutsche Lufthansa AG: the German airline will have 75% of Lufthansa Systems GmbH, while the General Motors Corp unit takes the remaining 25%; the new venture began operations on January 1 but financial terms were not
disclosed; the company will supply Lufthansa and its affiliates with all its information technology resources and will also seek to provide these services to other players in the airline industry; Lufthansa will transfer more than 1,000 of its information technology employees to the new company, which is headquartered in Frankfurt and also has offices in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and New York; last month, Electronic Data Systems announced a joint venture with the European Amadeus system, in which Lufthansa is a shareholder, and System One, the reservation system owned by Continental Airlines, where the Dallas company already ran the database.
The names Lucky and Goldstar look destined for the dustbin of history: South Korean giant the Lucky-Goldstar Group has decided to change its name to LG Group Ltd and similarly abbreviate the names of member firms; Goldstar Co Ltd and Lucky Ltd, biggest of the group’s nine firms listed on the Seoul stock exchange, will become LG Electronics Inc and LG Chemical Ltd respectively; the seven other listed firms are Goldstar Industrial Systems Co Ltd, Goldstar Cable Co, Lucky-Goldstar International Corp, Lucky Securities Co Ltd, Lucky Metals Co Ltd, Lucky Development and Lucky Insurance Co Ltd and the name change will go into effect once each listed firm ha the approval of general shareholders at meetings planned for mid-February.
Somebody out there likes the doughty Consett, County Durham maker of fault-tolerant Unix machines: an investment group including the Atalanta Selective Fund ú6 LP raised its stake in Integrated Micro Products Plc to 16%; it did not say, but the purchase of 202,000 more shares for a total of $1.3m is thought to be because it regards the company as a neglected jewel.
Thomson-CSF SA has raised its stake in Spanish military communications company Amper Programas SA to 39% from 30%, paying $6m, half to the parent Amper SA, the rest in new capital; under the agreement signed last June, the French group will also put up $1.5m sometime this year to raise its holding to 49%.
AT&T Capital Corp has definitive agreement to acquire Banco Central Hispano SA’s vendor leasing and finance company CFH Leasing International in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Benelux; terms of the agreement were not disclosed; CFH Leasing serves 4,600 business customers and has more than $500m in lease and finance receivables.
The mainframe is not dead is the cry in the IBM Corp world as sales prove more robust than the company anticipated, but the message from Unisys Corp is going the other way: with two – incompatible – mainframe lines, Unisys knows more about the business than most, but analysts say the company’s drastic new round of job cuts (CI No 2,572) reflects the fact that Unisys did not anticipate such a quick drop in revenues from core, high margin proprietary mainframe and associated software and maintenance businesses.
IBM Corp, which sold much of its copier business to Eastman Kodak Co in 1988 is reportedly negotiating with Kodak to provide copiers and support services in a deal valued between $50m and $100m: according to the Wall Street Journal, the proposed contract is with one major IBM division but could expand into other parts of the company.
Rank Organisation Plc has given up ideas of raising money on its 49% stake in Rank Xerox Ltd, and will simply hang on to the lucrative stake, the Evening Standard hears.
Sir Gerry Whent, newly knighted, was in the spotlight yesterday to announce that Vodafone Group Plc enjoyed its best ever month in December for new connections to its services: for the October to December quarter, Vodafone recorded 313,500 gross new connections and 186,000 net new connections and in December alone saw 161,500 gross new connections and 125,000 net connections, taking its subscriber base to 1.63m; Cellnet Mobile Communications Ltd reported 139,000 new subscribers in December to give the firm a total of 1.56m network subscribers at the end of the year.
Chip design sof
tware specialist Viewlogic Systems Inc, Marlborough, Massachusetts saw its shares slump by $7, 37%, to $11.50 after it warned that fourth-quarter sales are expected to rise only nominally from the year-ago period due to weak demand for design products and profits could be up to 10% lower.
Appearing tacitly to admit that some people complaining of spurious phone bills may be right, Deutsche Telekom AG has announced that in future around 200 numbers offering telephone sex services will be available only via the operator, so that such calls cannot be fraudulently dialled by computer and billed to unsuspecting subscribers.
Minneapolis-based Network Systems Corp expects to take a 1994 fourth quarter charge of up to $8m to cover cost-cutting measures it will take in 1995, including cutting its worldwide workforce by 10%, but Storage Technology Corp reaffirmed its intention to go ahead with its proposed share exchange acquisition of the high-speed networking firm.
Mitsubishi Electric Corp is to invest $400m to build a new plant for colour liquid crystal displays.
A one-minute cheap rate call to the US and Canada from the UK will fall 20% to 40 pence from next month, British Telecommunications Plc announced, and a three-minute call made during the daytime will come down by 22.3% to ú1.19 from ú1.53 – but line rentals are to increase by 4.6% on February 1 with the rental for a residential going up by ú1.10 per quarter to ú24.79, to ú23.79 stg for customers who pay by quarterly direct debit; line rentals for business users will rise by ú1.77 a quarter to ú40.15, it said.
Andrea Electronics Corp has developed a line of active noise-cancellation microphones and headsets compatible with IBM Corp’s VoiceType speech-recognition products; it said its products will provide greater accuracy and intelligibility for users in noisy environments; no price or availability details.
Miami-based Bloc Development Corp is no more: the company has changed its name to Tiger Direct Inc now that it is fully focused on its Tiger Direct direct response marketer, catalogue and mail order microcomputer software, hardware, peripherals and accessories business.
NEC Corp plans to cut personal computer prices by around 40% late this month to meet competition from low-cost machines from abroad, the Nippon Keizai Shimbun reported: the cheapest of a new PC98 range will cost around $1,000 with an 80486; NEC has cut costs by getting more than 80% of its parts from abroad, and assembling the motherboard at a subsidiary in Hong Kong, the paper said; its cheapest current model is $1,780 without display or keyboard.
BusinessWeek described the Internet as a peculiar blending of the personal computer and Citizen’s Band Radio… yes, but what happened to CB Radio after the craze died out?
