ACT Sigmex has completed a UKP750,000 order from NATO to upgrade WHIDDS, the War Headquarters Information Display and Dissemination System. Sigmex, graphics systems division of ACT Logsys, and part of the the ACT Group formerly known as Apricot Computers, completed the upgrade programme in three months, via its Dutch subsidiary, ACT Sigmex BV. WHIDDS is NATO’s war headquarters primary intelligence command intelligence system and provides interactive displays of the NATO region via a network of distributed Sigmex graphics workstations at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe in Mons, Belgium. ACT Sigmex says that the upgrade meets the performance requirements of running a distributed Ethernet network with the fully developed WHIDDS software application, and claims that near real time display and manipulation of data will be maintained as the application becomes more complex. A man-machine interface was developed by the Supreme Headquarters’ technical centre using WKS, ACT Sigmex’s subroutine and software tools library. Sigmex also claims to have significantly improved both graphics and workstation screen drawing speeds with addition of 25MHz Motorola 68020 graphics processor, and the MicroVAX workstations have also been enhanced with increased memory and disk storage.
