Fujitsu Ltd yesterday extended its line of vector-parallel supercomputers dramatically downwards with the worldwide launch of the VX Series departmental server and the low-end VPP300 Series, which slots in below the VPP500, its original vector-parallel machine, 14 of which are now installed, with an aggregate total of 299 processors. The VX and VPP300 are implemented in 0.35 micron fast CMOS rather than the Gallium Arsenide and BiCMOS of the VPP500 and are designed to be used as Unix-based servers. They run VXP/V, based on Unix System V.4 with supercomputing extensions. Both machines can use a 1.6 GFLOPS or 2.2 GFLOPS processing element, and the VX goes to four processors for a maximum 8.8 GFLOPS, while the VPP500 goes to 35.2 GFLOPS with the ful l 16 processors. Processors are via a conflict-free crossbar network with aggregate bandwidth of 18G-bytes per second. The 2.3′ by 2.8′ by 4.7′ high VX is designed for an office environment is air-cooled, drawing 2KVA. Main memory goes to 2Gb per processor. The 15 by 18 processor board includes Scalar Unit, Vector Unit and Main Storage Unit. A standard Unix workstation is used for applications development. Fujitsu Systems Europe plans to start shipments in the fourth quarter, with an entry-level single processor model at ú300,000. The company says it hopes to sell 300 of the new machines over the next three years.
