Digital Equipment Corp yesterday launched the first workstation built around its hot (it dissipates a daunting 40 Watts at peak) new 266MHz Alpha 21164 RISC, which was introduced last September (CI No 2,503). The part is rated at 290 SPECint and 440 SPECfp and the workstation starts at $20,000, said to be substantially cheaper than any other high-performance workstation. The company believes that the market is finally ready for the Alphastation 250, as the machine is called, because major software vendors have now caught up with its technology and have optimised their code for 64-bit working. DEC claims that the new AlphaStation 250 is 50% faster than any competitor in many types of operation, and is less than half the price of systems that perform scientific floating-point operations equally fast.
