Hot news on the exhibition floor was the conclusion of an agreement between UK parallel system maker Transtech Parallel Systems and Nichimen Data Systems Corp, subsidiary of trading house Nichimen Inc. The agreement, concluded only last Monday, April 20, provides for Nichimen to distribute in Japan Transtech’s 80860-based TRAM-TTM 110 parallel processor board, as well as associated Transputer software such as compilers. The products will be incorporated as a daughter board into the ParallelWare series of parallel processing systems sold jointly by Nichimen Data and Nippon Steel Corp, and sold as a new model the ParallelWare/80860 model. According to Yoichiro Yoda, of the AI Sales Section of Nichimen Data, the systems will be targeted initially at research and development environments, and the company hopes to sell 50 to 60 of the machines in the first year. As a result of a test marketing exercise conducted since February, when discussions began with Transtech, 16 systems have already been sold in Japan.
