After announcing 68030 processor upgrades for its 68020-based customers last October (CI No 791) Masscomp, Massachusetts Computer Corp, has now launched its 68030 range, the 6000 series, bringing it to the UK yesterday. Additionally the company claimed the first guaranteed response time for real-time Unix: 5mS maximum with 1mS average. Masscomp has also introduced its Super Lightning floating point accelerator – a VLSI chip-set consisting of a proprietary floating point interconnect chip and a Weitek 3164 adder/multiplier chip – which is integrated on 6000 boards, priced at UKP2,280. Four new systems comprise the new Masscomp line-up: the MC6300, MC6400, MC6600, and the MC6700 in configurations ranging from a seven-slot pedestal to 30-slot cabinet systems. The 6000 series supports a binary compatible multiple processor architecture with multiple floating point and vector accelerators, multiple garphics seats and optional data acquisition subsystems. The 6300 is the seven-slot pedestal version configured with one or two 68030s sharing a high speed 64Kb physical cache, one or two optional Super Lightning accelerators, 8Mb parity memory, SCSI interface, Ethernet controller and four RS232-C serial ports with prices beginning at UKP18,900. The 6400 is packaged in a rack-mount configuration with six 9U VME slots and six 6U VME slots and is configured similarly to the 6300 with an entry-level price of UKP21,900. The 6600 is available as pedestal or rack-mount systems with 15 slots and up to three 68030s. Each processor supports 64Kb physical cache, one 68882 floating point co-processor and an optional Super Lightning accelerator. One 14 MFLOPS vector accelerator per processor is also supported. The 6600 will support up to three Multibus input-output channels, one or two optional VMEbus modules, and one or two optional STD+Bus data acquisition buses. Prices for the 6600 range from UKP32,300 to UKP59,200. The top-of the-range 6700 is packaged with 30 slots supporting up to five 68030s, each with its own 64Kb cache, 68882 floating point co processor and an optional Super Lightning floating point accelerator. With up to four vector accelerators, four Multibus input-output subsystems, two VMEbus input-output subsystems and two data acquisition subsystems. Prices range from UKP44,800 to UKP91,200.
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