Laguna Hills, California-based board maker Carrera Computers Inc has teamed up with systems integrator Tangent Computers Inc to produce a MIPS R4000/R4400 Silicon Graphics Inc Indigo-like workstation, based on the old Advanced RISC Computing design and priced at $10,000 to $12,000, half Silicon Graphics’s high-margin $20,000 to $30,000 tags. The companies hope to have a system ready by the end of this quarter. The main thing standing in he way right now is the little matter of Silicon Graphics’s OpenGL graphics libraries. Tangent can see several ways of doing it including going to companies like the old Pellucid or Matrox for it. It is looking for the most cost-effective avenue. Interestingly, Microsoft Corp, in complaining about Silicon Graphics’ lack of support for Windows NT to our sister publication ClieNT Server News warned that if Silicon Graphics didn’t cannibalise its own systems, someone else would. Meanwhile Carrera Computers which has recently announced motherboards for for NT-on-MIPS and NT-on-Alpha, has reportedly been approached by both Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp on separate occasions about doing boards for the Precision Architecture RISC and PowerPC running Unix.
