steve@cs.ualberta.ca (Steve Sutphen) (10/30/90)
Myrias Research Corporation of Edmonton Alberta Canada closed their doors on Friday October 26. They had been building a parallel computer since being founded in 1982. They had just completed (and delivered) their third generation machine, an SPS-3. This machine was based on 64-MC68040 CPUs each with a substantial (at least 4MB/CPU) local memory. The architecture was intended to be scalable (I think up to 1024 processors). Software was a major portion of the technology that was developed. Their scheme of having a parallel `DO' statement was intended to make programming parallel machines very easy (this did work quite well for many problems). I understand that they were able to get over 100 MFLOPS out of a Linpack benchmark on the 64 processor SPS-3. I do know a little more about the machine and the company, although I do not feel qualified to discuss them and send out false information. Myrias was formed by several recent graduates of this Department, and we have trained many of their employees. We also have one of their second generation SPS-2s in the Department. I know that Myrias is trying to sell the technology to recover some of the venture capital and government loans. I also know that there are quite a few (40 to 60) high calibre programmers (compilers, operating systems, scientific applications, and testing) that are looking for work. If someone were interested they could contact me. steve@cs.ualberta.ca