A consortium of 150 computer and semiconductor manufacturers has come together in San Jose to create the dedicated to turning the Futurebus+ 25.6Gbps next generation bus, and the European Spirit workstation into the basis of a new computing standard intended to create exceptionally powerful computers for industry and business. The purpose is to replace expensive custom designs used in most computers so that computers will cost far less yet be able to do much more work. The Spirit engineering workstation is being developed under the European Community’s Esprit programme, and is backed with $30m of funding: partners in the Spirit Consortium are British Aerospace Plc, Kontron Elektronik GmbH, Associated Computer Experts BV, Amsterdam, Caption SA of Rennes, University of Tnigen, the University of Sussex and Queen Mary College, London (CI No 1,219). The VMEbus International Trade Association, backing what it is calling the VME Futurebus+ Extended Architecture, includes DEC, Sun Microsystems, National Semiconductor, Motorola, Unisys, Cetia, CompControl, Dawn VME, DY-4, Eltec, Force, Heurikon, Ironics, Micro Memory, Mupac, Performance Tech and the Spirit Consortium. Because the architecture will be open, there are no fees or licences and anyone can freely design computers with it. The aim is to produce machines that can solve problems too expensive to handle today – medical simulators that replace lab animals, engineering workstations for creating environmentally safe chemistry, instantaneous legal and criminal data for in-court and police use, and communications terminals with photographic visualisation to eliminate commuting. The Trade Association is also backed by the US Navy, and reckons the new architecture will represent a market worth $50,000m-up by 2000.
