Flavors Technology Inc, Amherst, New Hampshire reckons that its ambitious Parallel Inference Machine represents a revolution in factory automation and process control applications. The firm describes the thing as a supercomputer – actually it’s lots and lots of Motorola 68030s with some custom logic, and it comes with the Paracell language and programming environment claimed to support control application development in English. The firm reckons that the new products greatly simplify programming, debugging and operation of large automation and control projects, helping to bring them on-line faster and at a lower cost. The system is designed to replace complex networks of programmable logic controllers, minicomputers and specialised systems usually needed to automate a large manufacturing plant or process. The Parallel Inference Machine in maximum configuration is claimed to have 100 times the performance, 60 times the input-output and 500 times the memory of the most powerful programmable controller. It is designed to support mathematics, database, easy connection to applications running on VAX and IBM computers, and new technologies such as expert systems and neural networks. Paracell programming is done on a graphics workstation, and as they are in English, control engineers should be able to understand programs. Basic control algorithms can be tested and installed and later extended to meet new demands or unanticipated snags, all without any unin tended impact on proven control software, Flavors claims. The system is modular and comprise single Boss system manager board, processor boards and global data memory boards. A minimum configuration has one Boss and one processor board and at maximum can have 40 boards in any combination. The processor boards have four Motorola 68030 user-processors, each with floating point accelerator, 4Mb program memory and speci al-purpose processor that ensures that all user processors have a common view of and simultaneous access to the global data mem ory. The memory boards have either 32Mb of dynamic RAM or 4Mb of dual-ported memory that connects directly to input-output, and all data memory is addressable by variable name by all processors. A basic system with one processor board, one Boss board, programmable workstation, and all software licences, is $250,000. With 20 processor boards, 496Mb memory and four input-output boards, it would be $2m. The first system will be shipped this month to Yaskawa Elec tric Manufacturing Co of Chlyoda-Ku, Japan. Volume shipments start first quarter 1990.
