Now Shipping!
HYPERCUBE, INC. TO DEVELOP SOFTWARE FOR WINDOWS CE AND HANDHELD PCs
August 23, 1998
Boston, MA (ACS Conference) – Hypercube, Inc. announced at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society that it would be developing chemical software products for the new generation of handheld and palm-sized PCs that run Windows CE. A prototype of the first product, PalmChem, running on the Hewlett-Packard 620LX Palmtop PC was shown off on the floor of the show to interested and even excited attendees. With PalmChem and a computer that would fit in their pocket, attendees were able for the first time to render and visualize molecules up to and including biological molecules with a Windows CE application. The HP620LX was even able to perform quantum mechanical calculations of molecular orbitals. “I intend to be the first person in the world to perform ab initio calculations in my pocket”, joked Dr. Neil S. Ostlund, the CEO and President of Hypercube, Inc., referring to elaborate and time-consuming molecular calculations that are normally done on supercomputers. Hypercube, Inc. indicated that PalmChem was not yet in beta testing form and that the specs for the final product were still under development. “We are showing off some new technology and indicating a direction to our customers”, stated Millard Pate, Hypercube’s Director of Sales, “rather than describing a specific product. We will probably be making announcements on specific products before the end of the year.”
The CE version of Windows is a specific version of Microsoft Windows for Auto PCs, Palm-sized PCs and Handheld PCs. The HP 620LX is a variant of the handheld platform defined by Microsoft having a keyboard and a 256 color display. There is still very little application software for these platforms but Hypercube, Inc. indicated it thought these machines had a great future and that all students of chemistry might eventually want one of these devices to carry with them to class, to the lab, etc. The company indicated its principal interest was in the color models because of the need to render molecular structures in color. PalmChem is derived from HyperChem, the core product of Hypercube, Inc. and Hypercube, Inc. indicated it saw no real barriers to moving many of its regular Windows applications over to the new platform. “I wish they were a little faster but one has to balance their performance with the great new freedom the portability brings”, said Dr. Rajiv Bendale, Hypercube’s Director of Scientific Support.
Background
Hypercube, Inc. is a privately held scientific software company incorporated in 1985 and headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Their principal business location is now in Gainesville, Florida. Hypercube’s principal product is HyperChem for Intel-based PCs running Microsoft Windows 95 or NT and machines from Silicon Graphics, Inc. Other products include HyperChem Lite, an introductory version of HyperChem; ChemPlus, a set of extensions to HyperChem; and HyperNMR, a package that performs a priori quantum mechanical simulation of NMR spectra.
HyperChem is a molecular modeling software product noted for its ease of use. It is a comprehensive desktop productivity tool for visualizing, analyzing and communicating information about molecular structures as well as for performing the calculations of computational chemistry. It is the leading molecular modeling software for the Microsoft Windows environment of IBM-compatible PCs.
HyperChem is a registered trademark of Hypercube, Inc. All other trade and product names mentioned are the service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.