H P C S E L E C T N E W S *** March 19: Volume 2, Number 11. Circulation: 10,295 *** =============================== In This Issue =============================== 313) EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Steven Wallach, Convex Senior VP of Technology 837) BENCHMARKS: Linpack Results -- A Look at Parallel Processing 180) NEWS BRIEFS: Despite Setbacks, Seymour Cray Says He's Not Done Yet 314) COMMENTARY: Computerheads and Comm-Freaks: Can They Talk Together? 838) FACTS & FIGURES: System Specifications -- Thinking Machines CM-5 ============================================================================= *** SELECT NEWS UPDATE *** Thank you for using Select News, the new weekly interactive news and information service covering high-performance computing. We have sent out more than 20,000 stories over the last few weeks and have received tremendous feedback on this exciting new format for delivering news and information. Beginning April 7, retrievals from Select News will only be available to paid subscribers, although the weekly news bulletin will remain free. We are currently offering charter subscriptions -- including additional premium news services -- at substantial discounts to those who have participated in this beta test. For complete information, select number 601. Thanks again for your participation and support. ***************************************************************************** QUOTE OF THE WEEK: 313) "We've taken off our marketing myopia shades. Our vision of the future is a high-end compute server. The word 'supercomputing' now is more of a marketing B.S. thing than anything else." -- Steven Wallach, Convex co-founder and senior vice president of technology, on the company's place in high-performance computing. ***************************************************************************** NEWS BRIEFS 180) DESPITE SETBACKS, SEYMOUR CRAY SAYS HE'S NOT DONE YET Colorado Springs, Colo. -- In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Monday, Cray Computer Corp. founder and supercomputer legend Seymour Cray refuted critics who say his technologies are behind the times and his company doomed to failure. "I know when I'm done," he told the Journal. "But it isn't yet." -------------------- 181) IBM, HP, SUN LEAD CHARGE TOWARD COMMON UNIX ENVIRONMENT San Francisco, Calif. -- Six major Unix companies -- Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., The Santa Cruz Operation Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., Univel and Unix System Laboratories Inc. Wednesday announced their intent to deliver a common open software environment across their Unix system platforms. -------------------- 182) NASA SELECTS ALPHA AXP SYSTEMS FOR SCIENTIFIC ENGINEERING Washington, D.C. -- Digital Equipment Corp. announced that it has been awarded the NASA's Class 7 Scientific Engineering Workstation Procurement Contract, a five-year pact in which Digital will fulfill all of NASA's general-purpose workstation requirements for an estimated $96 million. -------------------- 183) CANADIAN METEOROLOGICAL CENTRE INSTALLS NEC SX-3/44 SYSTEM Dorval, Canada -- The Canadian Atmospheric Environment Service (AES) Monday celebrated the installation of its NEC SX-3 Model 44 supercomputer at the Canadian Meteorological Centre in Dorval, Quebec. -------------------- 184) QUADRICS PARALLEL SUPERCOMPUTER TUNED FOR NUCLEAR PHYSICS Munich, Germany -- The European Supercomputing Information Service said that a 100-GFLOPS Italian parallel computer designed for nuclear physics problems will be made available commercially. -------------------- 185) CRAY RESEARCH INTRODUCES RAID DISK ARRAYS, CHANNEL ADAPTER Eagan, Minn. -- Cray Research Thursday entered the high-performance RAID market with the announcement of its DA-60 and DA-62 disk arrays and the DCA-3 channel adaptor. -------------------- ALSO THIS WEEK: (Full stories available from more@hpcwire.ans.net) 186) Digital Shipping 64-Bit DEC OSF/1 for Alpha AXP Systems 187) Mexico's Pemex Orders Three Convex C3 Series Systems 188) European RS/6000 Cluster Consortium Enjoys Early Success 189) University of Manchester to Receive Fujitsu VPX240/10 190) Mitsubishi Electric to Manufacture Alpha AXP Microprocessor 191) New Matrix Equation-Solver Hits 20.5 GFLOPS on Cray Y-MP C90 192) Peter Van Cuylenburg Resigns as President an COO of NeXT 193) Cray Ports Major Tools, Libraries for Visualization Toolkit 194) Sun Inks Deal With Russia's ELVIS+ for Wireless Technology 195) Samsung Enters Workstation Market With HP PA-RISC Systems 196) Tatung Introduces SPARCstation 10, MicroSPARC Clones 197) MacNeal-Schwendler to Resell Wavefront's Data Visualizer 198) Lagging SPARCstation 10 Sales Expected to Hurt Q3 Results 199) Supnik Honored With Digital's Highest Engineering Title ***************************************************************************** ANALYSIS & FEATURES 313) Q&A: STEVEN WALLACH, SENIOR VP OF TECHNOLOGY AT CONVEX COMPUTER Exclusive Interview by Mathew Burns, Managing Editor Steven Wallach discusses the company's Meta systems, linking Convex vector supercomputers with HP workstations; the coming C4 supercomputer; and specifications for Convex's first MPP entry, due early in 1994. -------------------- 314) COMPUTERHEADS AND COMM-FREAKS: CAN THEY TALK TOGETHER? Commentary by Norris Parker Smith, Editor at Large Washington, D.C. -- For someone accustomed to high-performance computing, a communications trade show like Interop, held here last week, feels like a citizen of North China visiting Guangdong -- the surroundings are pretty much the same, the people are obviously close relations, but it is not always easy to understand the prevailing dialect. -------------------- 315) HUMAN SPEECH AND THE BRAIN: TEACHING A COMPUTER TO READ Feature Story by Steve Eisenberg, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center ***************************************************************************** SCIENCE NEWS 409) Scientists Identify Largest Bacteria Ever Known 410) NASA to Launch Satellite Into Space on 12 1/2-Mile Tether 411) Pocket E-Mail: Wireless Transmission Via Modem, Fax, Voice ***************************************************************************** 502) ACTIVE HPC STOCKS CLOSING 02/17 CLOSING 03/17 CHANGE Cisco Systems Inc. 82 92 1/4 +10 1/4 Novell 26 5/8 33 1/4 + 6 5/8 Oracle Corp. 28 1/2 35 + 6 1/2 Network Computing Devices 16 7/8 13 1/4 - 3 5/8 (To receive a full list of 72 HPC stocks, order number 502.) ***************************************************************************** SELECT NEWS INFORMATION 601) Charter Subscription Information for HPC Select News 602) Contribute to Select News With Tips and Editorial Input ***************************************************************************** OTHER INFORMATION AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: JOBS 711) Chief Engineer With Unicos/Y-MP Experience in Bay City, MI 712) Sales Manager for Major HPC Supplier in Portland, OR BENCHMARKS 837) Linpack Benchmark Results (March 6): A Look at Parallel Processing FACTS & FIGURES 838) System Specifications: Thinking Machines CM-5 839) Performance Objectives for NAS Teraflops Capability RESEARCH REGISTER 840) Rice's "Flow in Porous Media Advanced Computation Group" RESOURCES 841) National Science Foundation Metacenter Contacts Directory 842) Convex C3880 User's Guide CALENDAR 843) Polypeptide & Protein Structure Simulation, Cornell, May 3-4 844) SS '93 -- Canada's HPC Conference, in Calgary, June 6-9 BACK ISSUES 996) Menu of Items Published March 12, 1993 in HPC Select News 997) Menu of Items Published March 5, 1993 in HPC Select News 998) Menu of Items Published Feb. 26, 1993 in HPC Select News 999) Menu of Items Published Feb. 19, 1993 in HPC Select News ***************************************************************************** HPC SELECT NEWS' MOST REQUESTED ITEMS FOR THE WEEK OF MARCH 15-19 831) One Last Look at Steve Chen's Supercomputer Systems Inc. 163) New Study Predicts Massive Growth for Parallel Computing 830) Linpack Benchmark Results (March 1): Highly Parallel Computing 161) Meiko Refutes Security Concerns Over LLNL Super Purchase ***************************************************************************** SPONSORS: Free information available from the following companies 901) ANS 902) IBM Corp. 903) Network Systems 904) Intel 905) Maximum Strategy 906) nCUBE 907) Digital Equipment 908) Hewlett-Packard 909) Fujitsu America 910) Convex Computer 911) Fed Data 912) Avalon Computers 913) The Smaby Group 914) Sky Computers 915) Genias Software 916) MasPar Computer 917) MMB Development 918) Portland Group 920) R.J. 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