Ardent Computer - Stardent

Stardent

At almost the same time, Stellar Computer was founded in the Boston area by former Apollo Computer employees, and this new company was aiming to produce a workstation system with enough performance to be a serious threat to the Titan, and at a lower price. Ardent responded by starting work on a new desktop system called Stiletto, which featured two MIPS R3000s (paired with two R3010 FPUs) and four i860s for graphics processing (the i860s replaced the vector units).

In 1989 Kubota forced a merger of the two to produce Stardent Computers, Inc.. In an odd twist, the original Stellar group was left with most of the corporate power. A number of the Ardent employees were less than happy with this move, and quit to form other companies. Others attempted to get Kubota to spin off the original development group as a new company called Comet, but nothing came of this.

In 1990 Stiletto was entering beta when the east-coast management decided to shut down the entire west coast office. Kubota finally saw the error of their ways, and attempted to get Stardent to continue development of Stiletto, and when they failed to do so, formed Kubota Pacific Computers. However Stardent owned the rights to the Titan and Stiletto lines, so the new company had to develop new machines from scratch. Stardent itself eventually went bankrupt in late 1991, selling the rights back to Kubota.