HAL said Heller had been developing roadmaps for Fujitsu and its subsidiaries ICL plc and Amdahl Corporation for the six months prior to his resignation, and had been less involved with HAL's daily operation. In mid-1993, Heller resigned from his position as chairman and chief executive officer to become a consultant to Fujitsu Ltd. In return, HAL gave Fujitsu access to the technology it was developing. $40.2 million was invested in return for a 44% stake. The company's intent to develop a high-performance microprocessor implementing the SPARC architecture prompted Fujitsu to fund the company in 1991. The inspiration of the name comes from the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. His idea was to build computers based on a RISC architecture for the commercial market.
HAL Computer Systems, Inc was a Campbell, California-based computer manufacturer founded in 1990 by Andrew Heller, a principal designer of the original IBM POWER architecture. For the fictional computer in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, see HAL 9000.
