- Stardent Inc.
Stardent Inc. was a manufacturer of graphics supercomputer workstations.
History
Stardent Inc. was formed from the merger of
Ardent Computer Corporation andStellar Computer Inc. . The merger was announced on August 30, 1989. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_1989_Sept_5/ai_7620810 Ardent pursuit of Stellar victorious, Newsbytes News Network, Sept. 5, 1989] ] Ardent was based in Sunnyvale, California and Stellar was based in Newton, Massachusetts. In early July 1990, the west coast portion of Stardent joined the company headquarters on the east coast. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_1990_July_10/ai_9425769 Newsbytes index - July 10, 1990] ] On July 24, 1990, Stardent fired co-chairmen Alan H. Michaels and Matthew Sanders III after they brought suit againstKubota Corporation , a major investor in Stardent. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_1990_July_24/ai_9428097 Stardent fires co-chairmen after law suit, Newsbytes News Network, July 24, 1990] ] [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_1990_July_26/ai_9454173 Ousted Stardent co-chairmen vow to continue fight, Newsbytes News Network, July 26, 1990] ] The board of directors subsequently dismissed Michaels and Sanders from the board. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_1990_August_22/ai_9448725 Stardent dismisses former co-chairman from board, Newsbytes News Network, August 22, 1990] ]In August 1991, Stardent spun off its popular Application Visualization System (AVS) software into a separate company. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_1991_August_16/ai_11205787 Stardent spin-off to sell visualization package, Newsbytes News Network, August 16, 1991] ] In November of that same year, Stardent announced [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_1991_Nov_6/ai_11458984 Stardent to spin-off hardware, become software firm, Newsbytes News Network, Nov 6, 1991] ] that it would cease to operate under the name Stardent Computer Corp, sell off its Titan workstation operations to
Kubota Pacific , find a buyer for its Vistra workstations and create a new company calledGS Computer Services to provide maintenance and support for its discontinued GS series workstations it inherited from Stellar Computer Inc. The remainder of the company would focus on the AVS software system and the existing shareholders of Stardent would become shareholders of the software firm. By the end of the year, the company had given up on finding a buyer, believed to beOki Electric , for the Vistra line of workstations but still hoped to sell the underlying graphics technology based on theIntel i860 . [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n1892_v37/ai_11688658 Stardent ends bid to sell station line, Electronic News, Dec 23, 1991] ]Stardent had decided to liquidate itself instead of pursuing new funding from
Kubota Corporation . Its sales never were able to get above $50 million, which limited its ability to compete with other workstation manufacturers such asIBM ,HP andSilicon Graphics .Products
*
Titan workstation
*Vistra workstation
*GS workstation References
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