ICL has become the latest major manufacturer to commit itself to Sun Microsystems’ Sparc processor for its next generation of Clan departmental Unix systems, due out in the early 1990s. Peter Cunningham, ICL’s Departmental Systems Strategy Manager, said that the Sun product fitted in with ICL’s open systems strategy. The company will design and manufacture its own systems using Sparc, and anticipates a fourfold performance increase over similarly priced systems today. Existing Clan systems will continue to be developed, said ICL, and will co exist with the new systems. Sparc products will be aimed particularly at public service organisations throughout Europe, and ICL says it is already working with other significant European vendors that will be adopting Sparc technology. At present, ICL’s Unix machines come from Datamedia Corp, in which the company has a 16% stake, and from Computer Consoles Inc – and the decision to go for the Sparc looks like bad news for the latter, which is developing its own proprietary high-end processor to top off its line of Unix systems.
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