HAL Computer Systems was a Campbell, CA-based computer manufacturer. It was started in 1990 by Andrew Heller, a principal designer of the original IBM POWER architecture. His idea was to build computers based on a RISC architecture for the commercial market. When Fujitsu chose to fund the company, the SPARC architecture was chosen. Since the designers believed that a 64 bit architecture was necessary for the commercial workloads, HAL took the initiative in the definition of Version 9 of that architecture.
By the end of 1993, Heller was pushed out of the company and HAL had become a fully owned subsidiary of Fujitsu.
The company produced multiple generations of computers based on their proprietary SPARC microprocessors. Their microprocessors combined out-of-order execution with mainframe-style reliability, availability and serviceability features. Their SPARC64 processor beat out Sun's UltraSPARC I by a few months to be the first 64-bit SPARC microprocessor produced.
Most of the sales of the company went to the Japanese market. Fujitsu closed the subsidiary in 2001.
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