Oracle Corp’s Network Computer Inc subsidiary is sufficiently impressed with Digital Equipment Corp’s StrongARM supercharged version of the Advanced RISC Machines Ltd ARM RISC that it has joined forces with DEC’s Digital Semiconductor arm to create the Digital Network Appliance Reference Design. The design is intended to create a standard for the most powerful low-cost Network Computer, but the development could not have been too taxing because the NC Access Network Computing software environment is already up on the standard, relatively low-speed ARM chips. Documentation for the design will be available free to all manufacturers later this month and reference unit samples will be available next month with significant quantities later this spring. There are only two takers so far, Funai Electric Co Ltd of Osaka, and Aranex Inc of Bedford, Massachusetts, both of which are committed to building Network Computers to the new reference design. Aranex reckons to be building the first Network Computer for business users, the Internet Client Station.
