DEC revealed yesterday that it was considering licensing the RISC technology it is developing for its VAX line, and that it may also license its proprietary VMS operating system. The news came at a meeting in London to announce X/Open branding and Posix compliance for VMS. In fact, Posix compliance is at such a low level that it doesn’t count for much in terms of application portability, but it does mean that VMS now meets one criterion of eligibility for those juicy defence contracts – Posix conformant VMS will ship next year. Compliance to X/Open standards counts for more, but here DEC said VMS would not be XPG 3-compliant for another two years. DEC also said it was considering implementing the Open Software Foundation Distributed Computing Environment in VMS. At the same time DEC unveiled three new systems in the VAX range: VAX 6000-500 systems with processors offering from 13 to 72 VAX Units of Performance (one Unit is the power of the VAX-11/780) – up to six processors can be housed in a cabinet. These systems will be priced the same as the current 6000-400 range – UKP34,000 to UKP1.1m, while prices for the Model 310 and 410 systems have been cut by 35%. The Maynard minimaker also announced the MicroVAX 3100, shipping now, with processor performance enhanced to 3.5 VAX Units from 2.4 – pricing starts at UKP6,040. And the VAXstation 3100 Model 76 will ship in November and offers twice the performance of the Model 38 at the same price – UKP9,373 consequently, cuts of up to 35% have been made on most current VAXstation 3100s.
