The unavailability of Intel Corp’s promised Pentium chip is forcing hardware vendors like Unisys Corp, much of whose product line is iAPX-86-based, to scramble. This week Unisys previews a far-flung range of Pentium-ready machines, currently using 80486s but designed to be seamlessly upgraded to 60MHz Pentiums in the third quarter. The boxes include Windows and NetWare personal computers and two new U6000 Unix System V.4-based departmental uniprocessor servers, the 100 and the 300, 8-slot EISA systems with 192Mb memory capacity and a maximum 2.1Gb disk. The model 100, confusingly divided into the two-slot DT1 and three-slot DT2, will use an 80486DX2 and be upgradeable to a 300 in the fall. The 300 will be Pentium-only. The company says these boxes incorporate advanced video, SCSI and cache technologies. The DT should be formally announced next month. Unisys will also make note of the fact that its anticipated PCI-based multiprocessing Unix Server Design Center, due in the fourth quarter, will house Pentiums and later P6s and that the high-end U6000/75 and U6000/85 that it buys OEM from Sequent Computer Systems Inc will be field-upgradable to Pentium in the fourth quarter. Its 113-TPS U6000/65 multiprocessor will be upgraded to an enhanced 100MHz 80486 chip in the fourth quarter that should triple its speed while memory is expanded from 256Mb to 512Mb. Pricing will not be available until a month or two before first customer ships. Unisys has created the marketing rationale of the customer selecting the timing of its jump to the next generation rather than being forced to it by the vendor’s phasing out existing technology. Intel’s difficulties getting yields on 66MHz Pentiums leave Unisys, who has had a close collaborative alliance on chip design with Intel for the past two years, unable to say exactly when it go to the 66MHz parts. It guesses it will be in the fouth quarter. It estimates that the 60MHz chips are 10% less powerful than the 66MHzs, at least on integer performance which measures 64.5 Specint92 and 56.9 Specfp92. Despite these setbacks, which essentially put Intel back on the delivery schedule it first mapped out for Pentium, Unisys is quick to say how delighted it is it chose Intel’s part over any of the RISC technologies. It is impressed with the amount of investment Intel proposes putting into Pentium, saying that when the chip reaches the height of its production Intel will have spent $5,000m on it compared with $100m on the 80386 and $1,000m on the 80486. It’s half way through that figure now. Unisys uses this never-before-released measure to express the technological leap it believes Pentium represents.
Overlapping
It’s also a way of saying that Pentiums will be with us for a while, overlapping the life cycles of both the 80486 and P6, and that it will be some time yet before they reach a competitive price-performance curve. The follow-on P6 will represent an even greater though unstated amount of investment. Unisys basically feels however that with its price-performance and coming enhancements there is a lot of life left in the 80486 and that it will not be replaced immediately by Pentium, more the meat of early adopters, than the usual customer. The bulk of its business, it thinks, will be in 80486 machines possibly through 1994. Making 80486 boxes Pentium-ready is tricky enough, making Pentium machines ready for the coming P6s which break iAPX-86 compatibility is harder. Unisys is involved in P6 design considerations and needs to insure there is balance among the processor power, input-output and video system. It is also involved in P7’s definition. Unisys says it also intends to offer CTOS networked workstations and servers built around the Pentium in the fourth quarter. Its new A7 entry-level mainframe is also Pentium-ready, with availability for it to be announced.
