NEC Corp has reworked its SX-3 supercomputer to create a new SX-3 R series that with its top model, the 44R, is claimed to improve performance over its predecessor 16% and to be the world’s fastest in terms of burst speed at 25.6 GFLOPS when everything is contrived to go bang at the same time; it notes that the Cray Y-MP C90 has a burst peak speed of 24 GFLOPS, but Cray points out that with 16 processors, the parallel computation speed of its top-of-the-line is five times faster than that of the new NEC monster. The new 10-model line ships in September. Rental prices in Japan will be between $210,000 and $810,000 a month. The company hopes to do 50 of the new machines in Japan and, helped by its new deal with Control Data Corp, 30 of them overseas.
