The contention of Stratus Inc that it will be able to gain more software leverage from the Intel 80860 RISC processor than from the rival Motorola’s 88000 chip is something that 88Open Inc is working hard to dispel. The consortium’s Software Initiative Organisation – set up in February and composed of 30 or more independent software vendors committed to support Motorola’s 88000 RISC processor – has been talking about what is, and what will be on offer from its members over the coming year. Companies doing compilers to run on 88000 architecture include Absoft Corp, Auburn Hills, Mississippi, a Fortran compiler; Language Processors Inc of Framingham, Massachusetts, Cobol and Fortran compilers; MBP Software, Alameda, California, Visual Cobol 85, an ANSI-85 Cobol compiler; NKR Research Inc, a Basic interpreter and compiler; and Silicon Valley Software, Cupertino, California, Basic, C, Fortran and Pascal compilers. Cognos Software, of Ottawa, Ontario in Canada, is doing a version of its PowerHouse applications generation language to 88000 architecture as part of its open systems strategy launched at the end of last year. Franz Inc, Berkeley, California, is undertaking a Lisp development for the technology, and Mountain View, California, based Hunter Systems’ MS-DOS to Unix converter – XDOS – picked up by Motorola at the end of last year, will also be made available. Informix is set to introduce an 88000 version of its Unix-based relational database management system, and Phoenix Technologies, Norwood, Massachusetts, has announced a customised edition of its software co-rocessor technology. Progress Software Corp, Bedford, Massachusetts, is to put its Progress relational database and language on to the architecture, and Telesoft, San Diego, California, is doing Telegen2, its Ada development system. All the above – together with an 88000 version of Wordperfect 4.2, from the East Rochester, New York based word processing company – are to become available towards the end of this year.
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