Sir Clive Sinclair’s connections with the company are tenuous these days, but his vision in backing Ivor Catt’s ideas for wafer scale memory technology were finally vindicated on Monday when Tandem Computers Inc launched the V90 Rapid Access Storage subsystem and hailed it as the industry’s first commercial solid-state storage subsystem based on whole-wafer memory technology. Designed to be used with the company’s high-end NonStop Cyclone systems, it is claimed to provide increased performance in specific transaction and batch processing applications with intensive input-output demands. The V90 subsystem of course uses the memory technology from Anamartic Ltd, the privately-held Milton, Cambridge company in which Tandem Computers Inc and Fujitsu Ltd are investors. The memory is constructed on entire, uncut Silicon wafer with circuitry to detect and route round dud cells and Fujitsu is doing the fabrication. Tandem adopted the technology for its increased performance and reliability: being solid-state, it virtually eliminates seek and latency times, and each V90 storage module has its own controller and power supply, so components can be installed or removed while the subsystem is in use. It will be available this quarter: the 4334F has four 160Mb storage devices in a V90 cabinet, plus four V90 controllers at $325,000; the 4332F has two 160Mb stores in a V90 cabinet with two V90 controllers at $170,000; the 4330, with one 160Mb store and controller, is costs $86,500. Anamartic says that three other US companies are in talks to buy the memories OEM.
