Digital Equipment Corp was yesterday scheduled to fill the big gap in its mid-range and catch up again with the likes of Sun Microsystems Inc, coming out with the long-promised Rawhide machines as the mid-range AlphaServer 4100s for departmental databases, decision support and groupware. According to this week’s issue of our sister paper Unigram they fit between the 2100 Sables and high-end 8000 series TurboLasers, and come as three models. The 400MHz system offers one to four 0.35 micron EV56 21164 Alpha RISCs with up to 4Mb of cache; there is an entry-level AlphaServer system, also with one to four 300MHz uncached processors, aimed at the network file and print and Internet market, and a one- to four-way 300MHz machine with up to 2Mb cache. A uniprocessor 5/400 AlphaServer 4100 is pegged at 12 SPECint95 and 17 SPECfp95 and ships next quarter. The two 300MHz machines, the 5/300E and 5/300, use the 300MHz EV5 21164 chip. All run Digital Unix 4.0, Windows NT and OpenVMS and come with from 128Mb to 4Gb of memory, five PCI and three EISA/PCI slots, CD- ROM and PCI SCSI-2 and offer up to 21 slots. The uncached 5/300E goes from $55,000 with Unix and OpenVMS or $44,500 with NT. With 2Mb cache, the 300MHz system costs from $63,000 with Unix and OpenVMS and $52,500 with NT. As uniprocessors, they are rated at 8.2 SPECint95 and 13.3 SPECfp95. DEC puts the four-way 4100/400 up against Hewlett-Packard Co’s 120MHz four-way K420 rated at 163 SPECrate_int95 and 248 SPECrate_fp95 and Sun’s 167MHz Ultra Enterprise estimated at 200 SPECrate_int95 and 255 SPECrate_fp95, but at the time of going to press was still tweaking to get the last drop from the machine. Both the 300MHz systems ship this week and DEC claims it has already sold 750 Rawhide machines. At the high end DEC will announce new 440MHz EV56 21164 upgrades for its TurboLasers later this month and a 375MHz EV56 21164 upgrade for its 2100A low end. It is also reducing Sable pricing by 10% until September. DEC chief executive Bob Palmer will announce new Internet software tomorrow.
