Celerity Computing Inc, the San Diego, California company that builds scientific and engineering Unix systems around the NCR 32 chip set, has moved up into the near-supercomputer world with a new line of multi-processor systems built around a proprietary 64-bit reduced instruction set processor in ECL technology. The machine comes with from one to four scalar, one or two of which can optionally be vector processors, and is built around a 320Mbyte-per-second memory bus. The machine is rated at 15 MIPS under the Whetstone benchmark with one processor, 60 MIPS with four processors. Fully configured with two vector processors, it is ra- ted at 160 Mflops. The vector pro- cessor is said to be modelled after that of the Cray X-MP and to be compatible with it, using the Cray instruction command set. A vectorising pre-processor is available to adapt standard Fortran 77 code for the vector facility. The processor has a 25nS cycle and is designed to support up to 512 interactive users running the same BSD 4.3 Unix with System V extensions that is used on the C1200 NCR 32-based machines. The machine takes from 32Mb to 1Gb of main memory and up to 44Gb disk. Up to 11 90Mbyte-per-second burst rate channels can be supported. A uniprocessor with 32Mb memory, 690Mb disk, tape, maintenance con- sole and Unix is $250,000. With two scalar and two vector process ors, 128Mb memory, 690Mb disk, tape console and Unix it costs $632,000. First ships are set for November, with volume deliveries early 1988.
