IBM is talking with Steve Chen’s Supercomputing Systems Inc in Eau Claire, Wisconsin about possible use of its AIX Unix operating system to drive the SS-1 computer being developed by Chen. According to IBM’s Jerry Latta, group director of technical systems, the two companies have been holding talks on technology exchange, with the operating system a key element. He said development work on AIX/370 had made it particularly suitable for supercomputer implementations. They are also interested in our thermal conduction modules, and the way we implement parallelism said Latta, although he emphasised that no agreement had been reached. IBM announced its intentions to part-fund development of the SS-1 back in January (CI No 837), and reached definitive agreement two weeks ago.