ICL Ltd yesterday announced three new models at the high end of its Series 39 mainframe line. The Level 45, 55 and 65 replace the 40, 50XP and 60, and are fabricated in similar ECL circuitry – from Fujitsu Ltd – to that used in the top-end Level 80. Each comes in one or two processor configurations, and using ICL’s unique 320Mbps bandwidth multiple interface fibre optic link, two processors – or nodes – in a system can be installed up to 1,500 feet apart. The new models use 1M memory chips and field upgrades from existing models are offered. The Level 45 is rated at 40% above the Level 40 it replaces, and a dual-processor Level 65 out-performs the Level 80 uniprocessor – the latter is more powerful than a Level 65 uniprocessor by virtue of its scientific co-processor. Main memory on the new models is 16Mb to 32Mb per processor on the 45, 32Mb to 64Mb on the 55, and 32Mb to 96Mb on the 65 – per processor in each case. Maximum main memory on the 80, which is offered in one, two, three and four processor configurations, is also doubled to 128Mb per processor. A single processor Level 45 is rated at 15.6 transactions a second on the ET1 benchmark, a dual Level 65 at 72.8. A Series 39 Level 54 with 16Mb memory, 3Gb disk, tape back-up and printers is UKP350,000, or UKP22,000 a quarter under the ICL Exchange Hire Scheme.