One of General Electric Co’s most challenging semiconductor developments, the GEScan operation that developed and manufactures the GEFile high-speed text retrieval chip, was not included in the businesses sold to Harris Corp, and has instead gone in a management buyout. Terms of the buyout were not revealed, but the capital came from Boston Capital Ventures, Xerox Corp and GE itself. The new GEScan International Inc remains in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and starts life with 18 employees. GEFile consists of a back-end Text Array Processor, consisting of 12 individual query processors, each able to do sequential searches of up to 5m comparisons a second. The initial implementation is for DEC systems under VMS, although an IBM version is on the way. GEFile is also available as a stand-alone system based on a MicroVAX II. Prices start at $25,000 plus the price of the MicroVAX, $35,000 to $40,000 for the back-end for VMS systems.
