First taker for the new PowerPC-based machines from the Canon Inc-backed FirePower Systems Inc the Austin, Texas end of a Singapore company, IPC Technologies Inc. IPC will use FirePower’s motherboard in a chassis of its own design, offering a little more drive expansion space than FirePower’s own. IPC’s 603-based box will ship in January and has been tentatively priced at $3,500 – $500 higher than FirePower’s predicted ‘starts from’ price, but it does include a bundled 15 SuperVGA screen. The 604-based uniprocessor will follow in March, together with a dual-processor 604 machine which will ship in two variants – a low-profile desktop and a mini-tower system. The company’s boxes will initially ship with Windows NT, with Solaris and OS/2 under consideration. The company went with Menlo Park-based FirePower because of the latter’s ASIC designs. Our proprieta ry ASICs offer significant performance benefits over systems based on other chip sets, claims FirePower. IPC Corp Ltd was incorpora ted in May 1985 in Singa pore as a manufacturer of microprocessor-based prod ucts. IPC Technologies was formerly known as Austin Computer Systems Inc and currently markets MediaMag ic multimedia products and IPC point-of-sale terminals.
