Goldstar Co Ltd, part of the Lucky Goldstar group of Seoul, South Korea is the latest Far Eastern manufacturer to commit to building Unix machines using Sun Microsystems Inc’s Sparc microprocessor. Goldstar is licensing the SunOS Unix and other system software from Sun and will buy Sparc microprocessors from one of the six semiconductor vendors licensed to develop Sparc chips. It says its first Sparc systems will be available late next year. Goldstar has also committed to the Open Look user interface and will license Sun’s C and Fortran compilers, Network File System, SunView and the NeWS 1.1 window system. Goldstar also picked the design for the more than 1,400 Sparcware applications and the binary compatibility of a wide performance range of Sparc systems – and because the Korean government is standardising on Unix and is encouraging the development of distributed computing systems. Separately, ZyMOS Corp, Sunnyvale announced that it has been signed by Goldstar to develop a custom VGA chip for use in future Goldstar personal computer models.
