Estranged from former parent company Artificial Intelligence Ltd, and the problems that finally stifled it (CI No 1,547), the newly independent Strand Software Technologies Ltd, based in Markyate, Hertfordshire, seems to be holding its own pretty well. Its Strand88 parallel programming language has been adopted by the European Commission’s Parallel Computing Action as the de facto standard for parallel programming. The $24m project was set up by the European Commission’s Directorate General XII – the group responsible for information technology and communications – to encourage universities in Europe to develop basic software, programming tools, environments and applications – mainly in engineering and heavy sciences – for parallel computing. Of 55 academic sites that were awarded grants, 60% were reported to be developing packages with Strand88. Communications director William Pickles interprets the news as a vote of confidence, and a good indication of the level of repeat sales that can be expected next year. Since Strand Software broke free from AI Ltd in September – which David Catton, Strand’s managing director, assures was a mutual decision – the company’s financial position has been stable enough, and will now be boosted by income from the European Community. Catton points out that it’s early days yet, but says that the company – which started off with UKP100,000 working capital – is trading and, although still at the investment or start-up stage, expects to break even very soon. Despite a couple of important contracts that Catton carefully says were messed up for Strand Software, Strand88 is now selling better than ever before. Strand88 currently runs on Sequent Computer Systems Inc Symmetry machines, the Intel Corp iPSC Hypercube, MIPS Computer Systems Inc RISC machines, Encore Computer Corp Multimax, Transputer plug-in boards, Sun Microsystems workstations, Apple Computer Inc Macintoshes and NeXT Computer Inc workstations. And a version for networked Sun systems will be available will be available by the end of the month. Plans are also afoot for Strand to develop its own industrial applications for parallel architectures.
