Two UK companies, Meiko Scientific Ltd, Bristol and Real World Graphics Ltd, have new products based on the new Intel 80860 RISC. Meiko is using the chip to boost the vector capabilities of its Transputer-based Computing Surface: the MK086 Vector co-processor board has two 32MHz 80860s and two 25MHz T800 Transputers to provide communications, all sharing 4Mb or 8Mb of dual port RAM. Multiple boards can be configured into a single machine, The new CPUs were transparently integrated into Meiko’s parallel machine using its CS Tools software – also used to integrate Sun Sparc CPUs with the Computing Surface. Real World Graphics has a plug-in card designed to turn an AT-alike into a three-dimensional graphics supercomputer. Reality PC follows the firm’s recently launched Reality graphics supercomputers, using two 80860 processors in the MS-DOS box, laid out in the AT format with a 16-bit bus. It has 3.5Mb video RAM, 4Mb or 16Mb main memory and can display up to 16.7m colours; it is UKP12,000; Simulation Technologies Inc of Millis, Massachusetts distributes Real World’s kit in the US.
