Trying hard not to allow its SunSoft Inc relative to hog all the limelight, Sun Microsystems Computer Corp has now announced the Sparcengine IPX, a version of its recently-introduced Sparcstation IPX workstation repackaged as a board-level OEM offering. The thing is targeted at builders of the Sparc laptop and at developers of ruggedised systems. It is also being touted at the factory automation, medical instrumentation and command control markets, and says Sun, it will offer advantages to commercial and government markets where size, cost and graphics are important. The Sparcengine IPX, like its workstation cousin, is rated at 24.2 SPECmarks – that is roughly equivalent to 28.5 MIPS and 4.2 MFLOPS. It makes use of 40MHz Sparc chips from Fujitsu Ltd and Weitek Corp. The board includes the GX graphics accelerator – already down on a single chip in any case input/output, cache, 16Mb to 64Mb RAM, SCSI, audio, Ethernet and two SBus slots in a 9-by-9.7 package. It runs Solaris 1.0 and the Open Network Computing environment, supports Open Look and DeskSet tools. With 16Mb RAM, prices start at $9,000.
