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1993-04-21
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336 lines
DEC ALPHA WORKSTATION ANNOUNCEMENT SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ANNOUNCEMENT SUMMARY
On Tuesday, April 20, Digital Equipment Corporation announced the
addition of three new models to the DEC Alpha AXP Series 3000
workstation line, all of them aimed at "Developers, Technical and
Scientific, CAD, and Database"; the new workstations are:
Model 300L "Fastest Workstation under $5K"
Model 300 "Best price/performance workstation"
"Fastest Workstation under $10K
Model 500X "World's Fastest Workstation"
Digital also announced the following:
- Three new graphics packages:
DEC PHIGS; DEC GKS Version 5.1; DECOpen3D Version 1.0
- Workstation Farms (DEC's answer to HP clusters)
- R4000 daughter-card upgrades for DECstations that more than double
the performance of the previous systems (MIPs upgrade)
- Price reduction on the Model 500 (from $38,995 to $32,995)
- Alpha Companion Program: X Windows Terminals with Alpha:
1 15" color 300L plus 2 X terminals = $3,833 per seat (46 SPECmark)
1 17" color 300 plus 2 X terminals = $5,958 per seat (69 SPECmark)
1 19" color 300 plus 2 X terminals = $7,212 per seat (69 SPECmark)
- Kubota Pacific Computer, Inc.'s Denali family of graphic subsystems
for the Alpha workstations
ANNOUNCEMENT HIGHLIGHTS
* The Model 300L configuration at $4,995 is a 100-MHz, diskless,
nondiscountable 2-D desktop with a 17" grayscale monitor, 32 MB of
RAM, and no I/O slots. The same configuration but with a 16" color
monitor is $6,495.
* The Model 300 configuration priced at $9,695 is a 150-MHz,
nondiscountable 2-D desktop with a 426-MB disk, a 19" grayscale
monitor, 32 MB of RAM, and 2 TURBOchannel I/O slots. The same
configuration but with a 16" color monitor is $9,995.
* The entry-level configuration of the Model 500X is $69,995. This is
a 200-MHz, 8-plane 2-D, discountable deskside with a 3-GB disk, a
19" color monitor, 96 MB of RAM, and 5 TURBOchannel slots.
* All new models are currently available for shipping with either
OpenVMS or DEC OSF/1 AXP.
ANALYSIS
Alpha Models 300L, 300, and 500X at a glance--a quick comparison
with the HP Models 715/33, 715/50, and 735 and 755:
_____________________________________________________________________
|Company |DEC |HP |DEC |HP |DEC 3000 |HP |
|Series |3000 |9000 |3000 |9000 |3000 |9000 |
|Model(s) |300L |715/33 |300 |715/50 |500X |735 & 755|
|___________|________|________|________|________|__________|_________|
|Package |Desktop |Desktop |Desktop |Desktop |Deskside |Desktop/ |
| | | | | | |Deskside |
|___________|________|________|________|________|__________|_________|
|Speed: | | | | | | |
|SPECfp92 | 63.6 | 45.0 | 91.5 | 71.8 | 164.1 | 150.6 |
|SPECint92 | 45.9 | 24.2 | 66.2 | 37.1 | 110.9 | 80.0 |
|SPECmark89 | 59.8 | 45.9 | 85.5 | 69.0 | 160.8 | 146.8 |
|___________|________|________|________|________|__________|_________|
|AIM specs: | | | | | | |
|Perf Rating| 42.0 | 21.8 | 58.7 | 33.7 | 110.4 | 71.7 |
|Mx usr load| 216 | 143 | 225 | 252 | 805 |422 / 580|
|Mx thruput | 411.7 | 214.0 | 575.5 | 330.0 | 1082.4 | 703.1 |
|___________|________|________|________|________|__________|_________|
|Design: |AlphaAXP|PA RISC |AlphaAXP|PA RISC |AlphaAXP |PA RISC |
|Processor | 21064 | 7100 | 21064 | 7100 | 21064 | 7100 |
|Clock rate |100 MHz | 33 MHz |150 MHz | 50 MHz | 200 MHz | 99 MHz |
|I/O Slots | 0 |1 EISA* |2 TURBO | 1 EISA | 5 TURBO |1 EISA |
| | | | | | |4 EISA |
|Bus speeds | none |32 MB/s | 50 MB/s|32 MB/s | 100 MB/s |32 MB/s |
|SCSI types |std II |std II | std II | std II | std II | std II &|
| | | | | | |fast-wide|
|___________|________|________|________|________|__________|_________|
|Config: | | | | | | |
|RAM min/max|32/64 MB|16/256MB|32/64 MB|16/256MB| 32/256 MB|32/400 MB|
| | | | | | |64/768MB |
|Int Disk mx| 2.1 GB | 2 GB | 2.1 GB | 2 GB | 4.2 GB | 2 GB /|
| | | | | | | 4 GB |
|Ext Disk mx| 7.35 GB|66.6 GB | 11.6 GB|66.6 GB | 11.6 GB |126.4GB /|
| | | | | | |297.5 GB |
|___________|________|________|________|________|__________|_________|
|Audio Qlty:| voice | CD | voice | CD | voice | CD |
|___________|________|________|________|________|__________|_________|
|$ base/cnf:| | | | | | |
|Entry gray |$4,995 |$7,190 |$9,695 |$13,390 |not avail |$54,240 |
| | | | | | |not avail|
|Entry color|$6,495 |$8,190 |$9,995 |$15,490 | $69,995 |$56,840 /|
| | | | | | |$70,740 |
|___________|________|________|________|________|__________|_________|
|Graphics: |2-D only|3-D* |3-D** |3-D* + |3-D** | 3-D* |
|___________|________|________|________|________|__________|_________|
| * = Optional ** = PXG or Kubota |
| + Not clear from information available on 4/20 whether or not 3-D |
| options are available on Model 300; may require 3 slots |
|____________________________________________________________________|
NOTE that the 300s are not discountable, and the 715s are!
$ 7,190 minus 30% discount would bring 715/33 gray down to $5,033.
$ 8,190 minus 30% discount would bring 715/33 color down to $5,733.
$13,390 minus 30% discount would bring 715/50 gray down to $9,373.
$15,490 minus 30% discount would bring 715/50 color down to $10,843.
Announcement Strengths
======================
+ Excellent price, performance, and price/performance (but note that
the 300s are not discountable)
+ The 300L and 300 fill the low-end holes that existed in the Alpha
product line; the 500X fills the high-end hole
+ Analysts are calling the 500X the new "hot box"
+ Customer-focused VAX-to-Alpha upgrade strategy
Announcement Weaknesses
=====================
-- Uncertain Financial Position and Weakening Market Position--
Digital is a company fighting for survival, throwing all its resources
at Alpha in a desperate attempt to gain back its lost market share.
Digital posted a $30 million loss this past quarter along with
essentially flat revenue growth, and a $74 million loss the previous
quarter. In 1992, they lost a total of $2 billion, with a decline of
about 20% in revenue. Their workstation revenue fell to under $1
billion last year, and they lost nearly 3% market share.
Digital's position is expected to remain shaky through at least 1994,
due to management changes and ongoing restructuring, and its heavy
reliance on the acceptance of OSF/1 and Alpha. On March 29, 1993,
Business Week reported that so far "Digital has signed few big
buyers". And Gartner Group says there is lots of confusion in the
field among Digital's sals reps, indirect channels, and customers.
Meanwhile, HP has replaced Digital as the No. 2 player in the midrange
computer industry! HP did exceptionally well in 1992, with a revenue
growth of 13%. HP's 5-year compounded annual growth rate was in
excess of 44% in both revenue and units shipped (the market-wide
average increase was only 20%). Based on sales for the first 2
quarters, HP's 1993 revenue gain should be even greater. And
VARBusiness rated HP #1 for our strong relationship with our indirect
channels.
-- Applications Not Yet Available in Quantity --
Analysts agree that one of the primary keys to Digital's future
success is getting applications onto Alpha quickly, especially
applications that run on DEC OSF/1. Yet Alpha application availability
is still a major weak spot for Digital. There are only about 550
applications running on Alpha today. 100 of these run OSF/1; 50 are
Digital layered software products.
Even applications currently running on the Ultrix/R3000 or VMS must
be modified at the source code and recompiled and requalified to run
on DEC OSF/1 or OpenVMS. It typically takes a year from the time a new
platform becomes relatively stable until code is available to end
users. Consequently, many crucial applications won't be available
until at least the end of 1993.
HP has over 5,000 applications available on the HP 9000 family; 3,200
of them run on the Series 700.
-- New, Unproven Alpha Architecture -
Alpha is a brand new architecture, with all the bugs that accompany
any new architecture. Gartner Group says that so far they don't know
of any Alpha systems that are running in production environments.
PA RISC is a robust, state-of-the-art architecture; the 7 in PA 7100
stands for 7th generation PA RISC!
The 200-MHz Alpha chip sounds more powerful than it is. Alpha's clock
speeds often do not translate into real-life application performance.
This is because only Alpha's internal clock speed is 200 MHz; its
external capacity is only 100 MHz like that of HP's PA 7100 chip.
Alpha's performance depends heavily on compiler performance, and
Digital's compiler performance is still unproven. It took Digital 5
months to increase Alpha performance by 10%. HP is strong in compiler
technology. We have been increasing PA RISC performance by 60% each
year. Gartner Group says HP is "well poised for compute-intensive
performance."
Digital talks a lot about Alpha's on-chip cache. Alpha relies on
on-chip cache to keep its clock rate up. But on-chip cache actually
slows down applications unless the application can hit the on-chip
cache most of the time, because it takes longer to get to external
cache. The PA 7100 chip can access its external cache at the same
frequency used by the processor.
Digital also talks a lot about Alpha being the only full 64-bit
architecture, but PA RISC is also 64-bit. HP's current products
provide 64-bit segmented addressing. Broad acceptance of 64-bit
standards is years away; a broad base of 64-bit compatible
applications is not expected until the end of the decade. The first
enhanced PA-RISC 64-bit systems will appear at the middle of the
decade, well before 64-bit computing becomes a broad market
requirement. By moving too quickly to offer 64-bit systems, Digital
is burdening customers with additional complexity and cost with no
offsetting benefit.
-- Weak OS strategy --
Digital's current OS strategy is to offer a choice of three operating
environments (OpenVMS AXP, DEC OSF/1 AXP, and Windows NT) on the
entire Alpha line. However, it is highly unlikely that application
developers (including Digital) have the resources to port, test, and
maintain their applications on all three Alpha platforms. For that
matter, it is unlikely that Digital has the resources required to
maintain three operating environments over the long term. Digital
will eventually have to make some strategic decisions as to what
applications will run on what operating systems.
NT is Digital's long-term OS strategy. Digital is counting on NT to
ensure Alpha's success in the commercial marketplace. However, NT's
success is far from certain; NT won't even be announced until late
spring (the latest rumor is May 24).
OpenVMS is a proprietary OS that pays lip service to openness. It is
Digital's short-term strategy for migrating its VAX installed base.
DEC OSF/1 is Digital's short-term strategy for keeping its technical
base. Digital will find it hard to convince users to buy into OSF/1
because it is still an unstable OS, because Digital is the only vendor
committed to it, and because Digital's UNIX strategy has changed so
often. Analysts suggest that Digital went to OSF/1 out of desperation,
because Ultrix is deficient. Digital has no current plan to offer
OSF/1 on its larger systems, and will not have SMP support for OSF/1
for quite some time.
Here is a recent example of Digital's confused UNIX strategy:
At the same time that Digital customers were being assured by
Digital's Detroit sales reps that Digital would definitely port OSF/1
to MIPS, Digital's UNIX spokesman, Robert Price, was announcing that
OSF/1 definitely wouldn't be ported to MIPS. And this was the second
time Digital had reversed its position on this matter.
(Digital News and Review, 4/5/93, p.3)
HP has made clear its single-OS strategy for HP-UX across the entire
Series 9000 line. HP-UX is a mature, robust, proven operating
environment. HP-UX has the additional functionality required in a
real-life working environment. For customers who want to implement
OSF standards, HP-UX is a good choice: all the OSF DCE and DME
elements are implemented on the HP platform today.
-- Weak Graphics Options--
Digital's graphics have been losing their competitive edge recently,
which explains why they resorted to a third party--Kubota Pacific--
to supply them with a high-end 3-D graphics solution and an
alternative mid-range 3-D solution.
Kubota systems must be purchased directly through Kubota; Digital
representatives can only market them. And Kubota is not a qualified
distributor for most major accounts, including U.S. government
accounts. The Kubota systems are fairly well integrated with Alpha,
but coordinating performance is still difficult and time consuming.
HP leads the industry in mainstream graphics with the CRX 24Z, and
has a very strong graphics story at all levels (except the virtual
reality niche at the very high end). And HP offers 3-D graphics
even on the 715/33.
-- Alpha Workstation Farms vs. HP/Convex Clusters --
- Alpha farms are made up of Alpha 500X AXPs, which
cost twice as much as HP 735 cluster modules and deliver only
comparable performance.
- Alpha farms use standard networks only; HP clusters use standard
networks AND higher-speed proprietary networks from Convex.
- Alpha farms use only public domain software; HP clusters use
public domain software, plus HP TaskBroker, plus third party
software packages like Linda and Isis, plus Convex supercomputing
software ConvexPVM, ConvexNQS+ and MILIB.
- Digital offers no growth path to higher performance supercomputers,
since Alpha farms will not be compatible with Cray MPP machines
using Alpha chips. HP, with Convex, has a growth path to MPP
supercomputers that will be compatible with clusters of PA-RISC
workstations running today.
- Digital has one High Performance Computing Expertise Center (HPCEC).
HP has cluster labs in Ft. COllins, Boblingen (Germany) and with
Convex in Richardson, TX and Utrecht, Holland.
-- Relatively Weak Desktop-to-Datacenter Story --
On paper the Alpha product line looks quite good now. However, the
Series 10000 is shipping only with OpenVMS (and only in
single-processor configurations); and none of the high-end Alpha
servers are shipping in quantity. One reason for this is that the
10000 lacks SMP support for OpenVMS (coming soon, Digital promises)
and for OSF/1 (no SMP support for OSF/1 until at least the end of
1993, probably later). Another reason is that the performance of the
10000 is so poor, compared to the Series 7000, that no one will pay
the extra cost for a 10000. And there's the question of how much more
speed Digital can get from the Alpha compiler. They had to fine-tune
it to get the power they now have. It will probably take 12 to 18
months more to make it suitable for complex environments.
Gartner says that PA RISC has the best commercial performance in the
industry. This opinion is based on our ability to enhance performance
by 60% each year.
IN SUMMARY
* The latest Alpha workstations fill the gaps at the low and high
ends of Digital's Alpha workstation product line, and offer higher
performance and price/performance than the equivalent Series 700s.
* Dealing with Digital is risky: Alpha is an new, unproven
architecture; OSF/1 and NT are new, unproven operating systems;
Digital's financial situation is shaky, and it's entire business
structure is in a state of turmoil and change.
* Digital is focusing all its resources on speed and performance,
rather than taking the wholistic approach that would ensure a
high-quality system overall.
* Alpha still offers few applications, no native high-end graphics,
and no integrated multimedia.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Author: Dorothy Coe, WSG Outbound Marketing