NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/comp/arch/10618

Text File | 1992-11-11 | 12.4 KB | 230 lines

Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: sparky!uunet!decwrl!pa.dec.com!nntpd2.cxo.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!ryn.mro4.dec.com!wrksys.enet.dec.com!bhandarkar
From: [e-mail] (Dileep Bhandarkar)
Subject: Alpha AXP Press Release
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (USENET News System)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: 11 NOV 92 10:44:56
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Digital Equipment Corporation today introduced Alpha AXP computing: a complete
set of systems, software, applications, and services, with new business
practices, that provides a universal platform enabling unlimited open computing
possibilities.

Alpha AXP computing -- the first advanced 64-bit, twenty-first century
architecture -- is a major technology milestone for the computing industry. For
Digital, it reflects a renewed determination to help customers succeed. Alpha
AXP computing enables users:

o To run today's commercial and scientific applications faster, at lower cost;

o To use today's applications in more innovative ways, such as downsizing
mainframe applications to client/server networks, and

o To explore fully advanced applications such as virtual reality, imaging,
multimedia, artificial intelligence, language translation, advanced simulation,
and voice recognition.

"Today is the beginning of a new revolution in computing," said Robert B.
Palmer, Digital President and Chief Executive Officer. "With nearly limitless
64-bit computing power, and the applications of three major operating systems,
the path ahead leads wherever the imagination can take it.  Alpha AXP computing
will enable customers to invent profitable new ways to serve people."

"The products and services announced today mark the next phase of our Alpha AXP
roll-out, which demonstrates that Digital satisfies customer needs today, and
has the partners, products, services, and commitment to continue to satisfy
their needs well into the twenty-first century," he added.

Announced today were:

o The first universal platform -- Alpha AXP -- offering a choice of three open
software environments, a choice of open standards, and a choice of hardware and
network interconnects.

o  A family of Alpha AXP systems, ranging from the industry's most powerful
desktop workstation priced under $15,000 to the industry's most powerful
mainframe-class server priced at $316,000.

o  A comprehensive software suite of languages, tools, and utilities, and
commitment from more than 1,000 vendors to port more than 2,000 applications to
the Alpha AXP platform.

o  A complete new portfolio of services to help customers gain the benefits of
Alpha AXP technology for their existing environment and for new applications.

o  Enhancements to Digital's Alpha-ready upgrade program to make it attractive
for customers to buy VAX- or MIPS-based systems today and upgrade to Alpha AXP
systems in the future.

"Today's Alpha AXP announcement returns Digital to its strongest competitive
position in years. It is the result of a massive company-wide effort involving
all of engineering, marketing, sales, service, and manufacturing -- as well as
over 1,000 application and system partners. Yet, today's announcement is only
one in a series of planned major Alpha AXP announcements," said Winston R.
Hindle, Senior Vice President of Digital Equipment Corporation.

The Universal Platform for Open Choice

Alpha AXP computing goes beyond "open" to create the first universal platform.
It provides choice of operating system software, open standards, popular
peripherals, and vendors.  Since no one software environment can meet all
customer needs, Digital offers a choice of leadership operating systems.
Together, these three  operating systems bring a huge reservoir of applications
to Alpha AXP computing.

DEC OSF/1 for Alpha AXP is the only 64-bit operating system meeting the
specifications agreed to by UNIX System Laboratories and the Open Software
Foundation for a unified UNIX software platform.  This means it is able to
support applications written to all the popular UNIX variants -- including
System V, OSF, and Berkeley derivatives such as the ULTRIX operating system. A
software development version is available now, and volume shipment of an
end-user version will begin in March, 1993.

The OpenVMS AXP operating system provides the world's highest functionality
software environment -- with features that deliver leadership data protection,
integrity, availability, and scalability. The OpenVMS AXP operating system is
available now, and at the same base price as DEC OSF/1 for Alpha AXP.

The Windows NT operating system will provide the familiar Microsoft Windows
environment on the fastest hardware platform in the industry.

The universal platform will provide a choice of popular open standards,
including: POSIX, SQL, TCP/IP, OSI, ANSI languages, and others. The universal
platform also will provide a choice of popular hardware interconnects -- EISA,
SCSI-2, TURBOchannel, VME, Futurebus+, Ethernet, and FDDI -- so all popular
peripherals and networks can be used.

Unbounded Performance; Cost-Effective for Decades

AXP system performance begins where 32-bit reduced instruction set computing
(RISC) systems leave off. Unlike IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun RISC systems,
Alpha AXP computing  offers sixty-four-bit addressing -- four billion times the
data addressing capacity of current 32-bit systems. For example, 32-bit
addressing can directly address all the words in 111 file cabinets. Sixty-four
bit addressing provides the power to address all the words in a row of file
cabinets stretching around the world 5,000 times.

"Our goal is to create the 64-bit universal standard. Sixty-four bits will
enable the full potential, at affordable prices, of entire application arenas
that are only being experimented with today, such as multimedia, imaging, and
virtual reality," said William R. Demmer, Vice President, Alpha and VAX Systems.
 "Today's first Alpha AXP systems set new industry performance records, and
Alpha AXP technology will sustain that performance for decades. The Alpha AXP
architecture is operating system independent and we are aggressively partnering
at all levels of integration. Twenty-first century computing starts today," he
added.

Today's new products include a family of workstations and servers based on the
Alpha AXP architecture.  These systems offer the best price/performance in the
industry among systems in their respective classes from IBM, H-P, or Sun
Microsystems.  The new Alpha AXP models offer leadership performance across a
wide range of industry-standard benchmarks, including SPECfp92, SPECint92, and
SPEC89.

The DEC 3000 AXP workstations were announced today.  The Model 400 offers 107.5
SPECmark89 units of performance for less than $15,000.  The model 500 offers
large expansion capacity and is priced at less than $39,000.  Both are available
now.

Digital also announced today that it will introduce additional workstations, and
EISA-based AXP systems running Windows NT -- priced under $10,000 -- in the
first half of 1993.  Digital also announced five Alpha AXP servers. Server
versions of the two DEC 3000 AXP workstations offer very high performance for
less than $19,000 and $42,000 respectively.  DEC 4000 AXP servers offer
multiprocessing, powerful Futurebus+ I/O, twice the expansion of competitive
models, and up to 247.0 SPECthruput -- with prices starting at $77,000. The DEC
7000 AXP data center server is the most expandable data center system in the
industry in processing power, I/O, disk and memory capacity; it delivers 604.4
SPECthruput89. Entry prices start at $168,000.  The DEC 10000 AXP
mainframe-class server uses the fastest microprocessors in the industry --
200MHz, delivers over 654.6 SPECthruput89 and is priced starting at $316,000.
The DEC 3000 AXP, DEC 4000 AXP, and DEC 7000 AXP servers are available now; the
DEC 10000 AXP server will be available in the first quarter of 1993.

Solutions for Competitive Business Advantage

Today, more than 2,000 applications from 1,000 vendors already are committed to
run on AXP systems running the OpenVMS AXP or DEC OSF/1 for Alpha AXP operating
systems. To support application migration, Digital has shipped more than 800 AXP
systems to software developers and opened more than 30 Application Migration
Centers worldwide.

Digital's staged software delivery is on schedule, with software products for
applications developers available on both DEC OSF/1 for Alpha AXP and OpenVMS
AXP systems.  The 19 layered software products announced today include DEC
FORTRAN and DEC C compilers, DECnet networking and DEC Rdb database.  The next
stage, a complete CASE and runtime environment, is available to all developers
through Digital's Application Migration Center programs.  Services is an
integral part of Digital's Alpha AXP solutions capability. Digital leads the
industry in multivendor open services, servicing more than 14,000 products from
1,300 vendors.

Digital offers a dedicated set of multivendor services focused on smoothly
integrating Alpha AXP technology with existing multivendor environments. Digital
is committed to support its partners with the same level of service as for its
own products.

The expanded services portfolio includes new migration, training, and consulting
services that help UNIX, OpenVMS, and, soon, Windows NT customers easily move to
Alpha AXP-class computing. New design-in and support services help Digital's
Alpha AXP partners build, deliver and support Alpha AXP-based products.

Digital's goal is to give customers the widest choice of leadership solutions
across the broadest range of market segments. Digital is actively recruiting
partners and will sell its products at all levels of integration -- chips,
boards, system, boxes, software, solutions, and design -- and will license
intellectual property in alliances that will broaden the Alpha AXP market.

There are now more than 35 Alpha AXP partners, including Olivetti, Cray
Research, Kubota Pacific, Aeon Systems, and Raytheon.

Alpha-ready Upgrade Program Protects Customer Investments

All OpenVMS VAX and ULTRIX DECsystem products are "Alpha-ready." They support
the same software, data, applications, networks, clusters and peripherals as
Alpha AXP systems. This means that over 85 percent of customers' typical
computing investments in hardware, software, and training are protected. With
Alpha-ready upgrades, Digital protects the other 15 percent of customers'
investments -- the central processor itself.

With today's Alpha AXP announcement, Digital has improved its Alpha-ready
Upgrade Program dramatically.  For example, it now costs only $99/SPECmark for
the difference in performance when moving from any new VAXstation or DECstation
workstation to a DEC 3000 Model 400 AXP workstation. It costs $30,000 per
processor for an in-cabinet upgrade from the VAX 7000 system to the DEC 7000 AXP
system, a small percent of the total system price.

New business practices also enable customers to move software licenses easily
and efficiently to Alpha AXP systems.

To continue to provide leadership price/performance for commercial applications,
Digital reduced several Alpha-ready VAX entry system prices. Digital has
re-established its lead over IBM, H-P, and Sun, based on the widely recognized
TPC Benchmark A: $7,639/tpsA-Local and 51.95 tpsA-Local for the VAX 4000 Model
100 system.

Digital Equipment Corporation, headquartered in Maynard, Mass., is the leading
worldwide supplier of networked computer systems, software, and services.
Digital pioneered and leads the industry in interactive, distributed, and
multivendor computing.  Digital and its business partners deliver the power to
use the best integrated solutions - from desktop to data center - in open
information environments.

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----

Note to Editors:  Alpha AXP, AXP, the AXP mark, DEC, DECstation, DECsystem,
DECnet, Digital, the Digital logo, OpenVMS, TURBOchannel, ULTRIX, VAX, and
VAXstation are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation.  MIPS is a trademark
of MIPS Computer Systems.  UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System
Laboratories.  OSF and OSF/1 are registered trademarks of the Open Software
Foundation, Inc.  Microsoft is a registered trademark and Windows NT is a
trademark of Microsoft Corporation.  System V is a trademark of AT&T.
Futurebus+ is a trademark of Force Computers GMBH.

CONTACT:  Sarah Miller, 508-264-5420 or David J. Bouffard, 415-617-3500, both
of Digital Equipment Corp.