Encore Computer Corp
Computer Hardware - Monaca, Pennsylvania, United States
Encore Computer Corp Employees
Encore Computer Corp Details
Encore Computer was an early pioneer in the parallel computing market, It was founded in in Marlborough, MA in 1983 by Ken Fisher, former CEO of Prime Computer; Gordon Bell, an engineering VP from Digital Equipment Corp responsible for the development of the VAX; and Henry Burkhardt, co-founder of Data General and Kendall Square Research. Their goal was to build massively parallel machines from commodity processors; their first design, the Multimax, was released late in 1985. This was one of the first commercial designs to make use of bus snooping, allowing many processors to share the same memory efficiently. In 1988 Encore purchased the former Systems Engineering Laboratories (SEL) from Nippon Mining. SEL, founded in 1961, built high-performance electronics systems for industrial monitoring and control purposes, and was purchased by Gould Electronics in 1980; Gould was in turn purchased by Nippon Mining in 1988. Because US Govt regulations forbid foreign companies from owning control of companies providing key components of the national defense (SEL computers were used in many military flight simulators) Nippon had to sell the computer division. Nippon in essence paid Encore to buy the computer division. Parts of the computing side of the company were sold off over the years, with the last major spin-off being their Storage Products Group, sold to Sun Microsystems in 1997. In 1998 Gores Technology Group acquired Encore Computer Corporation, and renamed it "Encore Real Time Computing." The company consisted primarily of their real-time group, and the original SEL core, returning to this business niche. In 2002, Compro Computer Services, Inc. acquired Encore Real Time Computing, although most of the non-US offices still operate under the Encore name. Compro continues its support of SelBUS-based SEL, Gould and Encore Real Time Computing products, and offers an upgrade path with the Legacy Computer Replacement System (LCRS) hardware simulator.
