From: sharon@unixland.natick.ma.us (Sharon Machlis Gartenberg)
Subject: Slovenia Purchases Supercomputers
Organization: Unixland Public Access Unix  (508) 655-3848
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 13:52:26 GMT

The following is a statement released by CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson,
TX:

The Republic of Slovenia has awarded a three-year, multi-system contract
to Convex Computer Corp. This contract provides for a Convex C3860 super-
computer, purchased by the Ministry of Science and Technology, to be
installed at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana. Convex will also
deliver a C3220 system to the University of Maribor in Slovenia. The
supercomputers will be used for increased computer research and development
efforts in science and technology for the newly independent country. The
agreement also includes delivery of two additional Convex systems in the
next two years.

"Slovenia is the most politically stable and economically prosperous of all
the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe," said Dr. Peter Tancig,
Slovenia's minister of science and technology. "Our goal is to continue to
strengthen our economy by developing more knowledge-intensive industries
aimed at technologically demanding market niches."

According to Dr. Tancig, the Convex supercomputers will provide essential 
research and development support for the Republic's existing technologies
and future endeavors. "The systems will be used to support a wide area of
research and development activities throughout the country, such as
computer-aided engineering for automotive parts design and manufacturing,
computational chemistry applications for pharmaceutical companies and
industrial chemicals studies, and environmental applications for the
design of water turbines," he continued. "In addition to the research being
done for industrial purposes, the Convex supercomputers will be used for
advanced research by scientists in theoretical and high-energy physics,
computational chemistry, molecular biology, image processing, and
environmental modeling."

The C3860 supercomputer to be installed at the Jozef Stefan Institute,
pending export license approval, is an upgrade from a Convex C220 system that
was installed in 1989. "The advent of mini-supercomputers was essential to
the development of our local high-performance computing capabilities," said
Vladimir Alkalaj, the head of the Computer Centre at the Jozef Stefan
Institute. "With the acquisition of the first Convex system, our scientists
gained locally available and affordable computational resources for
computer-supported research and development."

The six-processor C3860 system is one of the fastest and most powerful 
supercomputers in Convex's C3 Series. The C3800 family features up to
eight processors, two gigflops of peak performance, and four gigabytes of
physical memory. The C3800 is the first supercomputer to be fully implemented
with gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductor technology. ...

The C3220, which will be installed at the University of Maribor, will be used
exclusively by students and scientists of the university for educational
and basic research purposes in computational fluid dynamics, astrophysics,
and theoretical mechanics.

"Convex supports Slovenia's efforts to strengthen its economy by taking
advantage of Western technology such as high-performance computing," said
Robert J. Paluck, Convex chairman, president, and chief executive officer.
...

 
-- 
Sharon Machlis Gartenberg
Framingham, MA  USA
email: sharon@unixland.natick.ma.us   or   uunet!think.com!unixland!sharon