Kendall Square Research Inc, the Waltham, Massachusetts start-up formed by Data General Corp alumnus Henry Burkhardt to deliver highly parallel processing to the commercial market, this week formally unveiled the KSR1 multiple instruction-multiple data parallel machine that has been extensively previewed here (CI No 1,822). The KSR1 is scalable to 1,088 custom 64-bit CMOS processors and the company claims it to be the fastest computer currently available and deliverable, a full KSR1-1088 configuration delivering peak performance of 43 GFLOPS with 34Gb of memory. It runs under a Unix implementation described as compatible with OSF/1 and the company has adopted Unix System Laboratories Inc’s Tuxedo transaction processing monitor for it. There is already a KSR1 at Manchester University and the company has established a UK subsidiary; it is now opening for business in Germany and France. It says that several customers have placed orders for KRS1 computers with more than 32 processors, including one from the Cornell Theory Center. It has the capacity to build four KSR1 systems a week, which would represent $200m or so in annual sales, which implies an average sale price of about $1m per machine, although the firm sets $1m as the entry price.
