SKY COMPUTERS TO PROVIDE RUGGED POWERPC-BASED MULTICOMPUTERS.

SKY Computers, Inc., a subsidiary of Analogic Corporation, is developing a rugged product line based upon the Company's successful AltiVec PowerPC-based Merlin multicomputer. The new product line, designated Xtreme, will be available directly from SKY for customer deliveries in the summer of 2001. SKY's entry into the rugged market space marks the first time a multicomputer vendor has developed and manufactured an extension of its commercial products to rugged packaging available and supported by a single source. SKY now provides direct-from-the-manufacturer, one-stop shopping for defense contractors and integrators from initial development through deployment.

The Xtreme products will extend the temperature, shock, vibration, and humidity ranges of SKY's Merlin (see chart), and open up additional applications of the product in the worldwide military and defense markets. Additional applications where the Merlin-Xtreme could be used include: Nbval above deck weapon systems, wheeled vehicles such as the HMMWV, airborne wide body radar systems such as those found on the AWACS or C-130, and avionics tactical operations such as cockpit applications for mission planning/rehearsal. For those applications that extend to very harsh environments, SKY will provide co-technology development and technology licensing options.

SKY is the only high performance multicomputer vendor to provide complete in-house "life-cycle management" for the defense and military community. Life-cycle management in the Xtreme product line provides defense contractors and system integrators with a single-source solution for their development, deployment, and upgrade needs. Before the Xtreme announcement, defense and military suppliers were faced with dealing with one supplier for the development phase of their program, and another supplier for deployment and long-term support. Program upgrades and technology insertion are now much simpler and less expensive. Over the life of a program, SKY's advanced software development environment provides transparent software upgrade from product generation to generation and from benign to harsh environments. Product continuity and consistency is guaranteed by SKY as the single source supplier. Costs are reduced over the life of the program as defense integrators and contractors are not required to seek a second source for their deployment needs.

According to Ed Hennessy, SKY vice president for worldwide sales, marketing, and business development, "This announcement reinforces our commitment to the defense and military supplier community to provide standard ruggedized product and support as well as complete life-cycle support for their programs. SKY has made a strong statement to the market by extending our capabilities to this level of ruggedization. It is a first for our class of embedded high-performance technology. It will provide SKY with access to a broader range of programs and provide a unique competitive advantage. This move will set the wheels in motion for future announcements0from SKY that will continue solidify our position in the defense and military market."

SKY Computers is a subsidiary of the $300M Analogic Corporation (www.analogic.com) of Peabody, MA. Analogic provides SKY with both the financial depth and expertise to be the first multicomputer vendor to extend its product line for harsh environments. SKY anticipates deliveries of the Merlin-Xtreme products to begin in the summer of 2001. Future commercial PowerPC products, also to be announced in 2001, will be added to the Xtreme product line, thereby providing defense and military suppliers with solutions across the long life cycle of their programs. As with all SKY Computers products, software upgrades are completely transparent across product generations. For specification details on Xtreme, please see below.