SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

More Power: Personal computer manufacturers are bulldozing their way into the minicomputer market with increasingly powerful machines.

Advanced Logic Research of Irvine will in the fall introduce a multiprocessing computer that, when fully upgraded, can rival the performance of minicomputers that cost 10 times more, the computer maker announced Monday at the Comdex computer industry show in Atlanta.

ALR’s MultiAccess Series 3000 machine is aimed at the business market. Dave Kirkey, vice president of sales and marketing, said it is the first multiprocessor system based on the superfast Intel i486 microprocessor. The machines will sell for $16,000 to $27,000.

Typical personal computers have only one microprocessor, the chip that performs the number-crunching tasks of computing. The systems bog down when large streams of data await crunching at the microprocessor.

Computer makers are now adding more processors to break the bottleneck. The ALR machine can be expanded to as many as six i486 chips. Kirkey said the machine rivals minicomputers built by International Business Machines Corp. and NCR Corp. in the $250,000 and up price range.

ALR has, to be sure, competitors multiprocessor arena. AST Research, another Irvine-based manufacturer of IBM-compatible computers, plans to introduce its multiprocessor machine at the Comdex show in November.