Just after we closed on Monday, Steve Chen’s Supercomputer Systems Inc bowed to the inevitable and closed its doors. Chen says that the company is still looking for new sources of finance that would enable it to re-hire the 320 people thrown out of work by the closure, but does not hold out much hope. The company had tried to raise money by offering shares to the public but was unable to get the guarantees from its principal backer, IBM Corp, that would-be underwriters to the issue were demanding. Chen said in a message to employees that the Eau Claire, Wisconsin company had designed and tested a prototype of what would be the world’s fastest supercomputer, and industry executives familiar with the project separately told Reuter that the prototype appeared to be a viable machine with a solid architecture. Analysts calculate that Chen needs another $60m to get the machine into manufacturing and start marketing a four-processor configuration, which would sell for about $10m; the latest plan had the machine growing to 32 processors. Despite its own financial woes, IBM is expected to provide 60 days’ redundancy pay for each of the employees. Analysts say IBM may have invested as much as $200m in Supercomputing Systems Ltd Partnership, the venture it formed in April 1988. The long-awaited supercomputer had been promised for last year, but the target date was later pushed back to the fourth quarter of 1993. The SS-1 supercomputer is nearly finished, but some parts still must be completed, the company told the Milwaukee Sentinel: In a very short period of time, we could be walking that machine out the door to a customer, a spokesman told the Sentinel – It’s just a shame that IBM doesn’t have the vision they ought to have.
