E1AR0002@SMUVM1.BITNET (Leff, Southern Methodist University) (09/28/87)
Summary of Spang Robinson Report, September 1987, Volume 3, No. 9 The lead article is on neural networks. TRW's Mark III offeres 500K interconnections per second for an eight board machine. Price for the Mark III is $60,000 to $90,000. Robert Hecht-Nielsen and Todd Gutschow formed HNC which produces a board level neurocomputer and software costing $9500 to $19,500. Science Applicatiosn Corporation system does 10M interconnections per second called the Delta-1 costing $15,000. Texas Instruments, Siemens, AT&T Bell Labs and Synaptics are developing true analog neural network chips. Martingale Research has a contract with Wright Aeronautical Labs to work with biological networks in culture. It also sels a network simulator software costing from $75.00 to $1275.00. Meiko Incorporated has sold 100 of the The Computing Surface which supports from 1-1024 processor nodes. Nestor Incorporated sells a data entry system for handwriting input to computers for $1595, a "Decision Learning System" and the Nestor Development system. It had ~$400,000 revenue in FY 86. Neuraltech sells Plato/Aristotle which is a system development kit costing $2000.00 for "Beta version." Neuralware sells a neural network prototyping and developing system for $495.00 They have a 200 order backlog. +_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_ Shorts Symanetec is merging with Living Video Text (inventor of Think Tank, Ready and More). Borland bought Ansa, the maker of Paradox. Borland has sold 120,000 copies of Turbo Prolog. Information Builders Inc., of Focus fame, acquired Level Research. Intellicorp reported a net loss of about four million on revenues of about twenty million for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1987. Symbolics reported losses of about twenty-five million on revenues of about 103 million. They have announced version four of their Prolog system. Integrated Inference Machines has placed one of its SM45000 symbolic processing systems at NASA-Ames. DEC has established an AI Lab at Palo Alto. Natural Language Incorporated has ported Data Talker and the NLI connector to Apollo work stations. Texas Instruments has introduced its Explorer II Color System. Advanced Decision Systems has been awarded a research contractor to monitor seismic events resulting from nuclear tests. James McGowan is now the president and CEO of Palladian Software. GENSYM of Cambridge, MA has filed a lawsuit against GigaMos systems, both of whom are offsprings of LMI. GENSYM claims that GigaMOS is "interfering with Gensym's customers and prospects."