Digital recaptures desktop workstation performance lead; New AlphaStation 500/500 outdistances HP, Sun, and SGI

Business Wire, August 6, 1996

MAYNARD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 6, 1996--Digital Equipment Corporation today reestablished its leadership position for the performance desktop workstation market with the introduction of the AlphaStation 500/500 workstation. Based on the Alpha 21164 microprocessor, the AlphaStation 500/500 workstation with an 8 MByte cache runs at 15/19.5 SPECint95/fp95, outperforming flagship workstations from HP, Sun, and SGI.

Digital today also announced new PowerStorm graphics accelerators which provide the world's fastest 3D graphics for Windows NT and surpasses performance of all comparable UNIX offerings. The new accelerators, which are based on industry standard interfaces including OpenGL and PCI, operate across Digital's Alpha and Pentium Pro workstations under the UNIX and Windows NT environments.

The AlphaStation 500/500 desktop workstation supports three operating systems -- Digital UNIX, Windows NT, and OpenVMS. Under Digital UNIX, the workstation offers:

-- 67 percent more SPECint95 performance and 84 percent more SPECfp performance than SGI's Indigo2 R10000-based workstations

-- 27 percent more SPECint95 and 5 percent more SPECfp95 performance than HP's newly announced C180 PA-8000-based workstations

-- and 94 percent more SPECint95 and 71 percent more SPECfp95 performance than Sun's newly announced Ultra1 200E workstations.

"For the past four years, Digital has remained on top of the performance pack in the UNIX workstation market," said Philippe Ribeyre, vice president of Digital's Workstation Business Unit. "The newest member of the highly successful AlphaStation 500 family -- the model 500/500 -- keeps us comfortably on top once again with a commanding lead."

New AlphaStation 500/500 Workstation Overview

Because of its high-performance, expansion, and superb 3D graphics capabilities, the AlphaStation 500/500 workstation is aimed at technical customers with compute- and graphics-intensive applications in mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD), entertainment, geographical information systems (GIS), and scientific markets.

The AlphaStation 500/500 supports up to 512 MBytes of memory, and includes a 256-bit wide memory bus, five storage slots and four PCI bays. One PCI expansion slot is 64-bit, enabling high-performance graphics, networking, and SCSI adapters. Other standard features include twisted pair and thinwire Ethernet, stereo-quality audio, an array of external ports for serial/parallel communications, and external SCSI connectors. These features eliminate the need for additional tabletop options or expansion boxes conserving space and saving money.

Outstanding Investment Protection

Customers who have invested in Digital's AlphaStation 500/266, 500/333, and 500/400 workstations can upgrade easily to the AlphaStation 500/500 with a simple board swap. In addition, all Digital's workstations, like the AlphaStation 500/500, come with an industry leading three-year warranty.

An AlphaStation 500/500 workstation with the Windows NT operating system is $54,660 for a system configured with a PowerStorm 4D60T graphics adapter, 2 MBytes of cache, 4 MBytes of texture memory, 128 MBytes of memory, a 2 GByte disk, a 21-inch color monitor, floppy, a quad-speed CD-ROM, keyboard, and mouse.

The AlphaStation 500/500 workstation will be available in September, 1996. The 8 MByte cache option will be available during the fourth quarter of 1996.

Digital Equipment Corporation is the world's leader in open client/server solutions from personal computing to integrated worldwide information systems. Digital's scalable Alpha platforms, storage, networking, software and services, together with industry- focused solutions from business partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global marketplace. -0-

Note to editors: Digital, the Digital logo, AlphaServer, AlphaStation, and PowerStorm are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company, Ltd. Windows and Windows NT are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All proper names are trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: Digital Equipment Corp.

Karen Quatromoni, 508/493-5848

quatromoni@ics.enet.dec.com