With such a multitude of Unix systems now on offer, and plenty more in the pipeline that have been talked up over the last weeks and months, Hewlett-Packard Co plans to bare its soul at the start of the new term, which begins after Labor Day in the US next month, when it will detail forthcoming plans for its entire Unix hardware range. It says its next slew of systems will be introduced in phases over the rest of this year and next, today’s issue of our sister paper Unigram.X reports. Most interesting will be details of new entry-level workstations based on its low-cost (and long-awaited) Precision Architecture 7100LC RISC. Machines running at between 50MHz and 70MHz will be able to run big and little-endian software and the chips are expected to be fitted with extensive multimedia additions. A new uniprocessor system using a higher clock speed 7100 part – it’s currently at 99MHz – is expected, plus first details of Hewlett’s multiprocessor workstation strategy. There will be new mid-range HP9000 Series 800 servers using processors with faster clocks – an eight-way top-end HP 9000 Series 890 corporate server system is due by year-end. Hewlett-Packard says that this will likely be followed in 1994 by a 16-way machine. The company’s packaged mainframe-alternative systems, based on its 890 servers, are due in the UK in November.
