Solbourne Computer Inc is keeping tight-lipped about its first serious challange to the Sun-compatible desktop market until this Thursday, October 18, but Swedish trade paper Computer Sweden has already spilled the beans. It reports that, as expected, the new S4000 uses the 64-bit Panasonic MN10501 Sparc implementation Solbourne developed in conjunction with its majority shareholder Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Rated at 25.5 MIPS, the system will be expandable to 104Mb and cost from UKP7,000. The paper also expects an S-Bus SGA graphics accelerator board for two- and three-dimensional graphics. Up until now, Solbourne has been most successful in the server market with its multi-processor Sparc systems: the new machines are expected to give the company a 40% performance advantage and 10% price advantage over Sun’s Sparcstation 1 machine.
