ICL Plc’s DAP Distributed Array Processor lives! Cambridge Parallel Processing Inc, Irvine, California and Khoral Research Inc, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have jointly adapted Khoral’s Khoros image and signal processing tools for use with Cambridge’s CPP Distributed Array Processor Gamma II massively parallel computer. The DAP technology was spun out of ICL Plc in 1986 to a company called Active Memory Technology Ltd, based in the UK, which went into receivership in 1992 and was subsequently bought by Cambridge (CI No 1,962). The DAP box, which includes Cambridge’s proprietary VLSI processor, is used in various defense and civil applications, including mine and target detection, medical image processing, detecting faults in power lines and other real-time applications. Cambridge said it will have added a C++ compiler by the end of the month too. Khoral releases version 2.1 of Khoros this week with a new Cantata front end and Posix compliance. Khoros is used widely within the US Defense Department, the company claims. Cambridge does all its hardware design and manufacturing out of Irvine, while its software and architectural development is still done at its UK base, legacy of its ICL origins.
