International Computers Limited - New Range

New Range

Even before the merger that created ICL was complete, a working party had recommended that the new company should develop a new range of machines offering "acceptable compatibility with the current ranges of both companies". This was also seen as a way to help "achieve company unity" for the newly formed organization. The resulting 2900 Series was launched on 9 October 1974. Its design drew on many sources, one being the Manchester University MU5.

It ran the VME operating systems, and supported emulation of both the earlier architectures (1900 Series and System 4), either standalone (DME, Direct Machine Environment) or concurrently with native-mode operation (CME, Concurrent Machine Environment). In the early 1980s ICL struck a deal to acquire semiconductor technology from Fujitsu, on whom they became increasingly dependent as the years progressed. Eventually Fujitsu acquired ICL, and in 2002 the residue of the company was rebranded as Fujitsu's European services arm.

The term "New Range" was used during development for the product line that was eventually launched as the 2900 Series, the operating system being known initially as VME/B and later simply as VME.

The computer hardware included:

These ran the VME and DME (emulation) operating systems, and were available in both single and multi-processor configurations, the later being known as Duals and SuperDuals (2966 and 2988 only). The company also developed a
* Content Addressable File Store (CAFS) that could be exploited by the VME file system and ICL 2900 IDMS and
* the world's first commercially available massively parallel computer, the Distributed Array Processor (DAP), that first ran as an attached processor to the ICL 2980.