3Dlabs Redefines PC Graphics with PERMEDIA Family of Graphics Processors for Pervasive 3D; High-performance 2D, 3D, video and VGA acceleration on a single chip; PERMEDIA boards will run Creative Labs 3D Blaster games

Business Wire, Oct 23, 1995

Technologies Inc., a leading provider of client/server systems management solutions, today introduced a new version of its failover software designed to ensure constant availability of Sun systems.

OpenVHigh Availability 2.0 allows one server to become a "backup system" for other servers on the network, thus ensuring users continued access in the event of a system failure. The new release provides a many-to-one (N-1) failover environment for Sun systems ranging from the high end to the low end, including Sun SPARCstations, SPARCservers and SPARCcenters running SunOS or Solaris. The new capability reduces the number of systems required to ensure availability of business-critical data and applications and offers the most cost-effective failover for Sun users.

The N-1 failover environment supports the designation of a single secondary server as the failover target for multiple primary servers. OpenVHigh Availability 2.0 will also continue to support the asymmetric and symmetric configurations provided in previous releases. Continuing OpenVision's commitment to offer customers a wide range of configuration options, Release 2.0 now also supports the serial line Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) for private networks between failover servers. Support of this protocol allows users to utilize a serial port for network communication, reserving S-bus slots on smaller SPARCstations for other purposes. It also supports SunSoft's Solstice DiskSuite Version 4 (formerly known as Online DiskSuite or ODS4) and Veritas Volume Manager, giving users flexibility in selecting from the leading data replication services for Sun systems.

"Based on the feedback of our OpenVHigh Availability customers, we've enhanced our industry-leading failover software significantly," said Richard Barker, senior vice president of OpenVision's Technology Division. "OpenVHigh Availability 2.0 now supports multiple server failover and additional third party services, improving cost effectiveness and configurability for our customers."

OpenVision has also improved OpenVHigh Availability's installation procedure and added integration with other OpenVision applications. For example, OpenVHigh Availability has now been tightly integrated with OpenVision's enterprise-wide backup solution, OpenVNetBackup, and its Kerberos-based authentication product, OpenVSecure. This integration allows users to protect storage and security servers with failover services, ensuring continuous availability of these systems.

OpenVHigh Availability provides support for all Sun SPARCstations, SPARCservers and SPARCcenters running SunOS and Solaris as well as Oracle, Informix and Sybase databases. Pricing for OpenVHigh Availability 2.0 starts at $10,000 and will be available December 1995.

OpenVision Technologies Inc. is a leading supplier of systems management applications and services focused on automating the management of business applications within complex, distributed computing environments. It provides systems management solutions for automated operations, application availability and performance, mainframe-class storage and network and system security on leading platforms including UNIX, Digital OpenVMS, Microsoft Windows, Windows NT and DOS, and Novell NetWare. The company has over 175 employees in 12 cities worldwide and an impressive list of Fortune 500 customers and government agencies.

CONTACT: OpenVision Technologies Inc.

Kathy Salvano, 510/426-6477

or

Sterling Communications Inc.

Paul Forecki, 408/441-4100 2581794 IAC Inc. today announced its second-generation, low-cost 3D graphics accelerator family -- PERMEDIA(TM) -- that sets a new standard for integrated 2D, 3D and video acceleration.

PERMEDIA delivers 3D performance up to four times greater than any other announced graphics chip or video games system - at pricing equal to many 2D-only graphics boards. PERMEDIA will be available to selected OEMs in the first quarter of 1996, and drives the price of a complete multimedia graphics solution to below $250.

PERMEDIA generates 25 million texture-mapped pixels-per-second with high quality, true per-pixel perspective correction and full bi-linear filtering. PERMEDIA's well-balanced 3D capabilities also include Gouraud shading, optional Z-buffering, fogging, blending, translucency, overlays and stencils at a rate of up to 500,000 50 pixel triangles-per-second.

PERMEDIA contains a compact and highly optimized unified graphics engine, re-architected using technology developed for 3Dlabs' GLINT(R) workstation-class graphics processors. PERMEDIA is also protected with the same fundamental patent estate as the GLINT product line.

"I believe that 3Dlabs is positioned to be the leading provider of 3-D graphics in desktop PCs. The PERMEDIA chip strikes an impressive price/performance balance and they have the strategic partners, like Creative Labs, necessary to grow the market for entertainment-class 3-D graphics," said Geoff Ballew, semiconductor application market industry analyst at Dataquest.