NEC Corp’s Computer Systems Division is one of a number of systems manufacturers expected to launch systems based around Intel Corp’s new Pentium II processors today – and claims it will be one of the first to market. The Express5800 LSE2400 is a dual processor workgroup server will use the new 0.25 micron 350 and 400MHz Pentium IIs and 440BX chipsets due to be announced today. NEC says the 100MHz system bus, which provides 35% faster access to main memory, and support for up to 1Gb of ECC SDRAM means the chip is suited for server-based implementations, as well as the desktop systems from Dell Computer Corp, Gateway 2000 Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp and NEC itself that will be in the majority today. The new machine comes in above NEC’s existing LE2200 two-way, using 266 and 300MHz Pentium IIs, which will continue to be offered, and below the MT2200, which has hot swappable disks and high availability features but lower performance 333MHz chips. The MT2200 will have to await a new rack mountable chassis, currently under development, before it gets an upgrade to the new chips. The new server should be shipping by the end of the month, priced just under $4,000 for a single 350MHz processor version with 32Mb memory and 2Gb storage. They will be sold in Japan under a different model number, and in Europe under the Zenith Data Systems badge.
