Hewlett-Packard Co is sweeping aside its motley collection of Unix workstations in favor of three new Visualize models which use its newest PA-8500 RISC chip, claiming to outperform market leader Sun Microsystems Inc’s newly-introduced UltraSparc II 400MHz/450MHz models by up to 80%. The HP-UX-based B1000, C3000 and J5000 use a single 300MHz chip, one 400MHz chip and up to two 440MHz processors respectively on re-designed motherboards claimed to deliver twice the performance available in the previous PA-8200-based models. Just one older model, the entry- level B180L, which uses a 180MHz PA-7300, is to be retained.
HP claims that at 30.3 SPECint95 and 48.6 SPECfp95 a new high-end J5000 uniprocessor outperforms Sun boxes by 80% on CPU performance – more on graphics. The B1000 comes with up to 1Mb cache and 2Gb RAM and is aimed at 2D and 3D designers. It’s priced from $9,900. The C3000 costs $13,800 and is aimed at simulation, visualization and complex IC design. The J5000 is designed for high-end EDA, 3D design and computational analysis. It is priced from $22,600. These are entry-level configurations with 2D Visualize EG graphics. The Visualize fx2, fx4 and fx6 accelerators are also available for the new boxes.
The new form factor and motherboard design – they support up to 2Gbps throughput – mean none of the existing workstations – which, bar B180L, are being phased out immediately – are upgradeable to the PA-850o models. Unlike its server cousins the PA-8500 workstations do not support board upgrades to IA-64. HP plans to offer PA and IA-64 models alongside each other. It is still trying to decide whether to do Merced boxes or jump straight to the higher-performance McKinley. HP is now supporting its Visualize graphics technology on Windows NT with the new Visualize Personal Workstations, which are to be developed and manufactured within the Unix workstation operation.
HP, which trails Sun’s 53.1% of the Unix workstation market by a considerable margin says there’s still a future for Unix, but admits most sales of the new systems will go to existing customers. There are still those who for some reason can’t or won’t move to NT or simply cannot get the horsepower from Intel- based systems.
