Acton, Massachusetts-based Wavetracer Inc will next week be showing at Supercomputing ’91 in Albuquerque a prototype of its new low-end deskside massively parallel computing system, due to ship next month. Zephyr, the latest member of Wavetracer’s Data Transport Computer family (CI No 1,529), comes in 4,000- and 8,000-processor configurations and, as with the rest of the range, can be hosted by IBM RS/6000, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics and Sony News workstations (Wavetracer has marketing alliances with those manufacturers). And, later this month, the company will launch an interface to the Apple Macintosh, and next month to Hewlett-Packard’s new HP9000 700 Series. The three-dimensional single instruction multiple data machine is implemented using CMOS gate arrays from Toshiba Corp, as with the previous models. But, whereas the existing configurations, with from 4,000 to 16,000 processors, cost up to $127,000, the new Zephyr, with up to 8,000 processors, ranges down to $85,000. Says vice-president for product marketing Robert Utzschneider, the new machine is smaller and faster – the company has raised the clock speed and optimised the control software. It is cased in a deskside tower measuring 8 by 23 by 29. Zephyr Models 4 and 8 contain 4,096 and 8,192 processors, and 128Mb and 256Mb memory respectively. According to a benchmark run for a US Department of Defense agency, the Model 8, which delivers some 700 MIPS, provides a price-performance advantage of over 50 to one over the agency’s Cray XMP-48 system running the same benchmark. Zephyr uses standard 110 Volt, 7 Amp power and weighs under 80 lbs when fully configured. The Model 4 costs $85,000, and the Model 8, $150,000. Wavetracer has 15 installed sites, many of which are in Japan – just one is in Europe. US customers include Lockheed Corp, which uses a 4,000-processor system in modelling underwater acoustics in submarine warfare research, and DuPont Co, which has a 16,000-processor machine for molecular modelling. The company is currently working to strengthen its sales drive on the continent. Here in the UK the machines are distributed by Computer General Ltd, Basingstoke, Hampshire.
