A $1000 Supercomputer?

Suitcase Supercomputer

Star Bridge Systems had sold one HAL computer upon the line's announcement. For one sales pitch, Gilson showed off what he calls a "HAL Junior"--a model that fits into a suitcase but delivers 640 billion instructions per second.

The company has mapped out a series of hypercomputer systems, ranging in performance from the HAL-10GrW1, capable of conducting 10 billion floating-point operations per second, to a HAL-100TrW1, which conducts 100 trillion floating point operations per second. The company is also selling signal-processing products (switches and routers) based on its HAL technology. These network products are designed for scientific supercomputing and extremely high-demand telecommunications.

Meanwhile, Star Bridge Systems representatives are speaking with major companies that have expressed interest in HAL, and that undoubtedly wonder whether the system can deliver the performance promised. Initial targets are those currently using supercomputers, and those who might see this as a higher-performance, lower-cost supercomputer.

"Eventually, reconfigurable computing [a term coined by Gilson, referring to the underlying technology behind the hypercomputer] will permeate all information systems, just because it's faster, cheaper, and better," Gilson predicts.