Digital Equipment Corp has released further details of the promised price cuts on its Alpha-based workstations and servers (CI No 3,075). Claiming that the discounts reflect a drop in memory prices and the Alpha chips themselves – although competitive pressure from the likes of Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co is the more likely spur – the savings for lucky Alpha-based system shoppers range from 12 to 47 per cent. A midrange AlphaServer 4000 5/300 system with 512 Mb memory and room for two 300MHz Alpha chips gets a 47% discount, now priced $31,500. The AlphaServer 8200 5/440 with 2Gb memory goes down 20 per cent to $224,400. Similarly flagship 8400 5/440 is now down 14% to $344,400 with 2Gb memory. The low-end AlphaServer 1000A 5/333 with 256Mb memory is down 12% to $13,950. Digital memory is now priced at $19 per megabyte, which means that AlphaServer systems configured with four times the memory they had before go for the same price as before. On the workstation side, the AlphaStation 600/333 with Digital Unix, 128Mb memory, 2Gb disk, monitor and PowerStorm graphics costs $25,000 – that’s down 42%. The 500/500 – which Digital still claims to be the world’s fastest desktop workstation – with 128Mb memory, 2Gb disk, monitor and PowerStorm graphics is down 20% to $40,000. The 500/333 is now $22,000 and the entry-level 255/300 is now $10,000. Digital claims that as a result of the pricing reductions, a 500/333 AlphaStation delivers up to 21% more performance, and is 21% cheaper than Hewlett-Packard’s C160L- Vis24, and is up to 20% faster than a comparably priced Sun UltraSparc 170E.
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