Following the decision by Fujitsu Ltd to end manufacturing and fire about 40 of its Hal Computer Systems Inc unit’s employees (CI No 2,919), the 64-bit HalStation workstation line will be built by Fujitsu affiliate PFU in Japan. Hal says it is negotiating a contract with a third party to implement the entire manufacturing process, including parts purchasing, manufacturing, testing and shipping. The company has also been split into three units, the microprocessor group, which is developing future versions of the 64-bit Sparc64 RISC, the workstation group, responsible for HalStation design, and a new scalable systems division which will design servers around the processor, none of which are expected this year. Hal expects there will be further consolidation between the disparate Sparc efforts under way at the Fujitsu units including chip-builder Ross Technology Inc, ICL Plc and Amdahl Corp. As expected, the company also beefed up its high-end HalStation 350 for specialist electronic design automation customers, loading the thing with 1Gb to 3Gb of memory, so enabling users to run a whole simulation in memory. The 118MHz Model 353 costs $106,700 for 1Gb RAM and 4Gb disk – each additional 1Gb RAM costs $88,000. Hal claims it has got customers lining up for the thi ngs. In a couple of months, the subsidiary it will provide other configurations tailored for capital markets, scientific research and development and mechanical computer-aided design. It claims it will be profitable by the end of its financial year in March 1997, but that is not likely to include repayment of the years of development funding that led up to launch of its first product at the end of last year.
