C Itoh Electronics, the trading house subsidiary which is one of the players in the Japanese X-terminal market shed light on last week’s story that Sun was considering building its own X-terminal (CI No 1,992). A spokeswoman claimed that Itoh had been involved in discussions with Sun regarding OEM supply of the X-terminal built by C Itoh, but Sun had decided to go its own way. C Itoh Electronics claims sales of 3,000 units since its release of CIT-XE series of X-terminals in September last year. Based on TMS 34020 (32MHz) and TMS34010 (50MHz) CPUs, the price of a 17 4Mb monochrome system starts from $3,387, ranging through to $6,343 for a 16 plasma display model system. The market leader in Japanese X-terminals is Japan Computer Corp, with aggregate sales of 10,000 units. Japan Computer attributes its success to its products being faster and lower cost than the competitors. It is selling internationally through distributors in both Europe and the US. At SunWorld it was displaying a new range of X-terminals based on the MIPS R3000 chip and proprietary ASIC chip called XSA (X-server accelerator). The high-speed monochrome GlobalXM is built around a 25MHz R3000A chip and has a performance of 130,000 Xstones and price of $4,016 for a 17 monitor with 4Mb memory; GlobalXG is a similar model with 256 shade grey-scale functionality and 80,000 Xstone performance at from $5,475); GlobalXP is built around the 40MHz R3000A and offers 256 colours and 130,000 Xstone performance at $8,048, while GlobalPEX is a similar colour model with floating point accelerator to support PEX, and GlobalXC is the lower 25MHz clock speed with colour and 80,000 Xstones performance, priced from $6,040. Japan Computer’s X-terminals have to date been ased on MC68020 and MC68030 technology, including two models of the Xface terminal with an electroluminscent screen. Other resellers of X-terminals include ELnis (Nisshin Electric), which was displaying a much cheaper product, but slower and connectable only via RS-232C serial ports – the LANBase GX14/21, for only $1,596 – very cheap in Japan.
