With both the Intel Corp Pentium processor and its own Alpha RISC chip ready to enter the personal computer market this year, Digital Equipment Corp is expected to get around the problem by offering parallel lines of nearly identical systems based on the two chips, US PC Week reports. But, the paper reckons, DEC will artfully slant the two lines to give the Alpha machines the price-performance edge. DEC will invite users to choose between Pentium- or Alpha-based systems with the same configuration and prices, but the Alpha machines will offer higher performance – DEC will offer an Alpha machine with a 150MHz CPU at the same price point as a 60MHz Pentium system. The 60MHz Pentium has been rated at 58.3 in the SPECint92 integer performance rating and 52.2 in the SPECfp92 floating-point rating. The 150MHz Alpha chip rated 74.3 and 125.1 respectively on the same benchmarks. The chips are expected to cost about the same when in volume production.
