H P C w i r e The Text-on-Demand E-zine for High Performance Computing *** Jan. 17, 1997: Vol. 6, No. 02 Circulation: 16,412 *** This Week's Table of Contents Represents 130 Pages of Text ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Article retrieval instructions at end of this file more@hpcwire.tgc.com For subscription information, email sub@hpcwire.tgc.com For a free 4-week trial subscription, e-mail trial@hpcwire.tgc.com -------------------- * -------------------- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * * * S P E C I A L S U P P L E M E N T * * * President's Letters [ ] 70085 ) A Letter From Robert H. Ewald President, Cray Research & Senior Vice President, Silicon Graphics, Inc [ ] 70086 ) A Year-Beginning Letter from Dom Saccacio, Chairman and CEO of DATATAPE Incorporated. [ ] 70087 ) "World Champs and Virtual Fusion -- What's Next?" Mark Bregman, General Manager, IBM RS/6000 Division [ ] 70088 ) A new year letter from Y. Yoshioka, president and CEO, HAL Computer Systems, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited. ______________________________ IN THIS ISSUE _______________________________ | | | [ ] 10606 ) FEATURES: MAKING MONEY IN JAPAN'S COMPUTER MARKET | | [ ] 10611 ) SCIENCE NEWS: NCAR SCIENTISTS PROBE FOG DYNAMICS | | [ ] 10614 ) COMMERCIAL NEWS: XPC HALTS WORK ON XLIB PLAYBACK BENCHMARK | | [ ] 10620 ) NEWS BRIEFS: RUSSIAN NUCLEAR CENTERS TO BUY SUPERCOMPUTERS | |____________________________________________________________________________| FEATURES ===================================================================== [ ] 10606 ) MAKING MONEY IN JAPAN'S COMPUTER MARKET.......................8.6K Commentary by Norris Parker Smith, editor at large Japan is a tough market, but 1996 sales by US vendors, especially in the PC and Unix segments, should total at least $9 billion in 1996. Even if protectionism were to be banished, Japanese vendors would be formidable competitors. [ ] 10607 ) AKIHABARA: COMPUTER BARGAINS AND A "RIGHT NOW" LIFE STYLE.....6.5K A personal report by Norris Parker Smith, editor at large Akihabara is the showcase and market-tester for Japan's PC vendors as well as a busy, hustling concentration of discount stores. PCs are advertised as fashion accessories. Akihabara sells dreams of success or delight as well as computers. [ ] 10608 ) PSI PROJECT SEEKS EFFICIENT COMPILATION, PERFORMANCE: PART I...14K by Alan Beck, editor in chief An intriguing approach to fully understanding, and thereby significantly enhancing, computational performance, has been adopted by the Psi Project conducted at the State University of New York at Albany. [ ] 10609 ) O.YASAR COMMENTS ON THE HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING USERS GROUP..5K by Alan Beck, editor in chief The HPCU Group was created specifically as "a user group forum that is managed by the users themselves and is vendor independent -- but serves as a liaison to the vendors, the funding agencies, and the entire user community." SCIENCE & ENGINEERING NEWS [ ] 10610 ) PROJECT HYPERCOMPUTING: NETWORKED HPC AT GERMAN UNIVERSITIES..4.2K Cluster computing over LANs and WANs is gaining increasing importance, especially for HPC. For German universities, the cluster approach is slated to become the primary means of supporting research computing. [ ] 10611 ) NCAR SCIENTISTS RESEARCH FOG CONDITIONS.......................4.6K Using computer models of California weather, three scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder have successfully replicated the process that causes a narrow tongue of low clouds and fog to surge northward along the state's coast after clearing has occurred. [ ] 10612 ) NEC AND INRIA ANNOUNCE JOINT PARALLEL COMPUTING R&D...........2.7K NEC Corporation and Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), the French national research body for information technology, are to initiate joint research and development into parallel computing. [ ] 10613 ) WES CORPS TEAM RECEIVES SC '96 GOLD MEDAL.....................3.1K A Corps of Engineers team of researchers from the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (WES) in Vicksburg, Miss., received an SC '96 gold medal for its "distributed interactive particle simulation." COMMERCIAL NEWS [ ] 10614 ) XPC HALTS WORK ON XLIB PLAYBACK BENCHMARK (XPB)...............2.9K Citing a lack of industry interest in more detailed X benchmarks, the X Performance Characterization (XPC) project group has voted unanimously to discontinue work on a record and playback benchmark for measuring X- server performance. [ ] 10615 ) STATE DEPT. CREDIT UNION ORDERS ENVISION IMAGE PROCESSING.....3.4K The State Department Federal Credit Union (SDFCU), located in Alexandria, Va., announced that they have ordered SoftCHEC's visionPrime and visionManager image solutions to replace their Unisys S6000 system. [ ] 10616 ) DEMAND FOR ATM HIGH WITHIN RETAIL INDUSTRY....................3.5K A comprehensive survey of networking technology, conducted for 3Com Corp in the retail industry, shows demand for high-performance Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). [ ] 10617 ) IBM LAUNCHES FREE WWW-BASED U.S. PATENT SEARCH................3.1K IBM has launched one of the most comprehensive free World Wide Web services for finding and viewing information contained in more than 2 million U.S. patents issued in the past 26 years. QUOTE OF THE WEEK ============================================================ [ ] 10609 ) "As HPC becomes more of a market-driven technology, user input becomes more essential." -- Osman Yasar, staff scientist at ORNL & chair of ISUG ___________________________INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHTS_____________________________ | | | [ ] 70081 ) FREE Trial Subscription to WEBster, The Cyberspace Surfer -- | | Your Guide to What's News on the Web | | [ ] 70082 ) WHAT DO USERS WANT FROM HPC PRODUCTS AND SERVICES? | | A Special State-of-the-Industry Report | | [ ] 70083 ) The Real Numbers Behind Net Profits | | * The Largest Study of Web Marketers Ever Conducted * | | [ ] 70084 ) PGI, CRPC and LANL invite you to attend the First Annual | | HPF User Group Meeting | |___________________________________________________________________________| NEWS BRIEFS ================================================================== [ ] 10618 ) NIST Creates New IT Lab.......................................1.1K [ ] 10619 ) HP and Oracle Focus on Upcoming Merced-Based Systems..........1.5K [ ] 10620 ) Russian Nuclear Research Centers to Purchase Supercomputers...1.6K [ ] 10621 ) UK's Savacentre Invests GBP 500,000 on IBM RS/6000 System.....1.5K [ ] 10622 ) Ultra Enterprise 6000 Posts TPC-C Benchmark...................1.7K [ ] 10623 ) DIGEX, Cisco Develop Tag Switching for Next-Gen Internet......1.9K [ ] 10624 ) Europay Migrates Payment System to Hewlett-Packard............4.1K [ ] 10625 ) Sun Licenses Gentia for Data Analysis, Decision Support.......1.7K [ ] 10626 ) Siemens Pyramid Intros New RM600 Servers with cc-Numa.........1.9K [ ] 10627 ) FORE Opens APAC Regional Technical Center in Hong Kong........1.1K [ ] 10628 ) Centron Expands European Presence.............................1.2K [ ] 10629 ) FTI to Integrate TIBCO Software into Real App Suite...........1.4K [ ] 10630 ) Motorola Selects ILOG Software for $3.4B Comm Network...........2K [ ] 10631 ) U.S. Air Force Selects CA-OpenIngres For Training System......1.6K [ ] 10632 ) NCR Forms Group Dedicated to OEM Sales........................2.9K [ ] 10633 ) SPARC 5, Solaris to Power In-Store Kiosks for OfficeMax.......1.7K [ ] 10634 ) PDI Adopts LSF for Graphics Imaging Applications..............1.8K [ ] 10635 ) Seagate Uses Netscape Client & Server Software for Workgroups...2K [ ] 10636 ) Shiva's LanRover Access Switch Chosen by Deutsche Telekom.....1.7K SHORT TAKES [ ] 10637 ) Product Watch: DEC Rolls Out New Alpha-Based Workstations....40.8K Intranet SDK for Java Available. Borland Announces Client/Server Suite for AS/400. [ ] 10638 ) Financial Update: Intel Sees Rise in 1996 Revenues............9.9K DEC Reports 2nd Qtr Net Income. Legacy Storage Systems Changes Name. [ ] 10639 ) Corporate Liasions: Fore Acquires Cadia......................20.3K Data General to Market Egan Cobol Products. [ ] 10640 ) People and Positions: Unisys Names John Carrow CIO............5.2K Datamind Adds Documentum CEO to Board. JOB BANK ===================================================================== [ ] 667 ) Employment Opportunities From: The Portland Group, SGI/Cray at Los Alamos, Raytheon E-Systems (2), University of Illinois, Argonne National Laboratory (2), National Center for Atmospheric Research, IBM Corp.........................................................8.3K [ ] 604 ) Job Bank Rates and Regulations..................................1.22K CONFERENCES ================================================================== [ ] 2888 ) Calendar of Upcoming HPC Events (Updated 01.16.97)............12.6K HPCwire INFORMATION ========================================================== [ ] 670 ) Masthead........................................................2.2K [ ] 601 ) Subscriptions & Removals........................................2.6K [ ] 602 ) Submitting Letters & Articles...................................1.6K [ ] 950 ) Index of Back Issues.............................................11K Comments regarding editorial content may be sent to: editor@hpcwire.tgc.com ______________________H P C w i r e S P O N S O R S_____________________ | Full background information on all Sponsoring Companies | | [ ] 936) Sony [ ] 905) MAXSTRAT* | | [ ] 934) HP/Convex Tech. Ctr. [ ] 930) HNSX Supercomputers | | [ ] 921) Cray Research Inc [ ] 902) IBM Corp. | | [ ] 909) Fujitsu [ ] 935) Silicon Graphics | | [ ] 937) Digital Equipment* [ ] 932) Portland Group | | [ ] 915) Genias Software [ ] 938) VNI* | |__________________________________________________________________________| Firms marked with an * have updated their info within the last 30 days. -------------------- * -------------------- To date HPCwire has delivered 1,594,392 articles and product announcements to HPC professionals worldwide. This year, HPCwire proudly celebrates its fifth consecutive year of service to the scientific, academic, and industrial communities: 1992-1997. *** LAST ISSUE'S MOST REQUESTED ITEMS *** [ ] 10566 HPC IN 1996 AND 1997: AN INTERVIEW WITH LARRY SMARR...........8.2K [ ] 10567 HOWARD RICHMOND OFFERS VIEWS ON CHANGING HPC MARKETPLACE......5.5K [ ] 10568 REPORT OF NCAR CONSIDERING $1.5M EXEMPLAR PURCHASE............3.1K [ ] 10569 CTC TO TRIPLE COMPUTATIONAL CAPABILITY........................3.3K [ ] 10641 TOP 20 MOST REQUESTED ARTICLES FROM LAST WEEK'S HPCwire.......1.8K ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~