vid@astroatc.UUCP (Dave Greunke) (10/07/88)
ASTRONAUTICS CORPORATION OF AMERICA ANNOUNCES THE ZS-SERIES OF ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC COMPUTER SYSTEMS New York, NY, September 8, 1988 --- Astronautics Corporation of America today announced the ZS Series of Advanced Com- puter Systems designed for general scientific and engineer- ing applications. The Wisconsin company's entrance into the minisupercomputer/supercomputer market follows 29 years in the development and manufacture of similar high technology products. These include telecommunications computer systems incorporating a variety of peripheral hardware and software subsystems, multifunction display processors and numerous digital airborne and shipboard computers. The ZS-1 and ZS-2 computer systems are the first products to be announced resulting from a four year development effort by a dedicated engineering and software team assembled by the Milwaukee-headquartered company at its Technology Center in Madison, Wisconsin. These announcements are the first of many scheduled over the next several months and years as ZS Series product enhancements and features complete develop- ment and on-site customer testing. The ZS-1 is a UNIX-based, 64-bit word computer system. It contains a Central Processor Unit (CPU) with highly parallel scalar architecture, which coupled with a uniform set of compiler techniques, gives high performance (up to 45 MIPS/22.5 MFLOPS) on vectorizable programs as well as inherently scalar codes. The ZS-1 also features a large Main Memory (32-1,024 MB) and a high bandwidth input/output subsystem (180 MB/sec; 1-32 I/O Processors). Qualified industry-standard peripheral and network communications equipment is available with the ZS systems from Astronau- tics. ZS Series architecture is based on an inherent tightly- coupled, multiprocessor design. The ZS-2 is a dual CPU implementation as a field upgrade for the ZS-1 similar to Main Memory and the I/O Processor augmentation at a customer's site. The first ZS-2 installation was made last month at the New York University Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. FORTRAN, C, Pascal and Common Lisp are major programming languages currently released; ADA is committed for availa- bility in 1989, along with features designed for compatibil- ity and connectivity with IBM MVS and VM and DEC VAX/VMS environments. Various UNIX utilities, libraries and pro- gramming aids are also supported with special emphasis on company support for user applications software required by ZS Series customers. The ZS Series is supported at customer sites by Astronau- tics' seasoned in-place worldwide field service organiza- tion. Astronautics is currently seeking a number of qualified com- puter professionals to aid in further development of this and future systems. See "misc.jobs.offered" for further details. Astronautics has sales offices at several locations in the United States and also in Western Europe. For further information contact: Mr. Jerry Clay Astronautics Corporation of America (608) 221-9001