The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has picked four contractors for the first phase of its High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program, designed to develop a new generation of "economically viable" and robust systems for national security and commercial use by the end of the decade. IBM, Cray, Sun Microsystems and SGI won separate 12-month contracts valued at about $3 million apiece, DARPA said in a June 12 statement. "The HPCS program will fill in a gap in high-end computing...