Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!americast.com!usa-post Newsgroups: usa-today.tech From: usa-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: usa-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: tech Wed, Apr 1 1992 Date: Wed, 1 Apr 92 05:43:26 EST Message-ID: 04-01 0000 DECISIONLINE: Technology USA TODAY Update April 1, 1992 Source: USA TODAY:Gannett National Information Network FASTER COMPUTERS IN FUTURE: Few sciences are as obsessed with speed as computing. Malvin Kalos, director of Cornell University's supercomputing center, sees current speeds as nothing more than steppingstones. "The whole history has been to do in a minute what took you an hour, and in a second what took you a minute," Kalos say. The next step: Doing in a trillionth of a second what now takes a full billionth. (For more, see special Computer package below.) GOLDIN CONFIRMED FOR NASA: The Senate Tuesday confirmed aerospace executive Daniel Goldin, 51, to head NASA. He replaces Richard Truly, who was ousted in a dispute over the space agency's direction. The National Space Council, headed by Vice President Quayle, wants increased control over space policy. "Times are tough," Truly said in a farewell to NASA workers. WINDOWS TO BE PRE-INSTALLED: Microsoft said Tuesday its updated Windows 3.1 software will be pre-installed in a variety of personal computers. Microsoft says 85 manufacturers, including eight of the 10 largest PC makers in the industry, are pre-installing its operating system so PCs will be ready to run when customers receive them. Microsoft formally unveils Windows 3.1 next Monday. HUGHES, INTEL SETTLE SUIT: Hughes Aircraft Co. and Intel Corp. Tuesday announced a settlement in a patent infringement suit filed by Hughes in 1983. The settlement calls for Intel to pay Hughes $35 million and for both parties to dismiss all claims in the action. Hughes' case alleged that Intel infringed three semiconductor patents relating to ion implantation processes. EGIS USED TO DETECT BOMB: Thermedics Inc.'s bomb sniffer, called Egis, operates at 15 international airports. The machines do a computerized analysis of what they smell, and blink a green light if it is OK and red if something is amiss. Egis is a product of a $20 million investment, of which $7 million is from the State Department, $5 million from the Federal Aviation Administration and $8 million from Thermedics. IOSCAN USES ION MOBILITY: Ioscan, made by Barringer Instruments, uses a technology called ion mobility spectrometry to detect bombs. Molecules are vacuumed, then dropped down a tube. Various molecules drift at different speeds in the controlled electronic field, and Ioscan sounds an alert if any molecules drift at the identical speed of molecules found in plastic explosives. TI TO MAKE CYRIX CHIPS: Texas Instruments said Tuesday it will produce a new semiconductor chip for Cyrix. Cyrix, a privately-held company, is trying to mount a challenge to Intel's position as the top chipmaker in the USA. On the news, TI's stock gained 3:8 of a point to $32 5:8. FIRING PROFITS CANION: Getting fired wasn't too bad for former Compaq CEO Rod Canion. Compaq is paying Canion $3.6 million over 16 months, ending in 1993. The agreement is in Compaq's annual proxy statement, released Tuesday. Compaq also is letting Canion exercise all stock options he has acquired as CEO prior to 1991, but it refuses to say how many he was granted. BELL, U. OF TENNESSEE SIGN DEAL: South Central Bell and the Institute for Public Service, a division of The University of Tennessee, Monday finalized an agreement as founding partners of the Telecommunications Applications Partnership. TAP is designed to a help public and private institutions work together to advance telecommunications technology and economic growth in Tennessee. INGRES, NETWISE TEAM UP: Ingres, An ASK Company, and Netwise Inc. Tuesday announced a cooperative selling agreement. Ingres and Netwise will offer joint solutions to firms that need seamless information integration between mainframe systems and high-performance Ingres applications. The Netwise System simplifies the construction of complex network communications code in client:server business systems. SPECIAL PACKAGE ON COMPUTER: TERAFLOP SPEEDS BEING DEVELOPED: This summer Malvin Kalos, director of Cornell University's supercomputing center, hopes to test a technology that could prove crucial to development of a teraflop computer. That is a machine capable of ripping through 1 trillion calculations per second. It would permit scientists to design drugs by computer, model global climate changes, map genes and explore subatomic behavior theories. PROCESSORS ARE LINKED: Kalos test this summer will link 64 computer processors - the internal engines that do the bulk of the work - so they can break down and attack complex problems at once. This technology, called massive parallelism, remains the only means of achieving teraflop speeds. In its advanced stages, experts envision thousands of integrated processors at work on a single, colossal problem. ONE PROCESSOR NOW USED: The conventional method, which still pervades much of the supercomputing industry, feeds chunks of data, one at a time, through a single processor. Regardless of how fast this simple operation can be carried out, limits such as the speed of electricity create impassable barriers to faster computing. TEREFLOP COMPUTER 5 YEARS AWAY: Success with the 64-processor system, he said, would probably provide the technology for a 1,000-processor linkup. This could boost power into the 40-gigaflop range, more than four times the world's top speed now. The first teraflop computer is at least five years away. Scientists say the expertise already exists to build a teraflop computer, but it would cost $100 million or more. (End of package.) Technology Editor: Ed Kelleher. (1-919-855-3491) Making copies of USA TODAY Update (Copyright, 1992) for further distribution violates federal law. This article is copyright 1992 Gannett News Service. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM