Ultra Network Technologies Inc of Santa Clara, California duly introduced its Ultra Network System this week (CI No 1,018) saying that it can connect supercomputers, near-supercomputers and workstations in a network with a total bandwidth of one Gigabit per second. The system initially supports systems from Cray Research Inc, Convex Computer, Alliant Computer, Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, and the firm says the UltraNet’s effective performance is more than 50% of the available bandwidth of any high speed host’s input-output subsystem. The company currently has three UltraNet hubs, each optimised for a specific host performance range: the 1000 is the 100Mbps version; the 250 supports 12 data links each at up to 25Mbps and they are $8,000 to $75,000 per CPU depending on the host. The UltraNet Cluster links workstations and servers at data rates over 7Mbps and throughput over 4Mbps, and is $49,000 for four and $79,000 for eight workstations.
