DEC has killed its Argonaut project to develop a medium-to-high end VAX and now plans to fill the gap with a scaled-down version of the top-end Aquarius project to develop a VAX processor so powerful it will need water cooling. According to Electronic News, the Aquarius machine is being designed to deliver 20 to 25 MIPS, and the Argonaut was to have been in the 10 to 14 MIPS range. The new scaled-down Aquarius has been code-named Aridus, no doubt because unlike its big brother it won’t need a circula tion of chilled water in its veins to keep its cool. The US trade weekly says that cancellation of the Argonaut project has left some 300 mid-range engineers in Littleton and Marlboro, Massachusetts sitting around waiting to be reassigned. The Argonaut development has been squelched very late in the day, because it had been expected to be out in VAX colours in the autumn: it is understood to have been a reimplementation of the basic VAX 8800 ECL processor (which started life as the 8700) in faster 100K ECL from Motorola. Aquarius is believed to use chip packaging and interconnect technology acquired from Dr Gene Amd ahl’s defunct Trilogy Ltd. The Aridus air-cooled version is believed to be sufficiently advanced that DEC may still be able to get the machine out late this year or, failing that, early 1989. No comment from DEC.
