NEC Corp’s San Jose-based NEC Technologies describes its new RISCserver 2000 as a new class of advanced symmetrical multiprocessing workgroup server for the Microsoft Corp Windows NT Server network operating system 3.5. The company claims the machine, which takes one or two NEC Vr4400 R-series RISC microprocessors delivers the most powerful database transaction processing capability at from under $12,000, and is ideal for Microsoft BackOffice and Windows NT. The processors run at 200MHz and are fitted with 2Mb of high speed Level Two cache; they have an enhanced SCSI backplane for hot-swap RAID. Options include a new 32-bit EISA RAID controller with up to 64Mb of cache and up to three separate fast SCSI-2 channels; 7,200rpm 2.0Gb and 4.0Gb fast SCSI-2 disk drives; and a storage cabinet supporting up to two 5.25 SCSI-2 removable media devices and up to eight 3.5 SCSI-2 hot-swap-capable hard disk bays. Main memory is expandable to 128Mb on the motherboard and can be extended to 512Mb when an optional memory expansion board is added to the machine. Estimated end-user selling prices go from $11,400 to $25,000.
