Intel, NetPower bare joint plan

Electronic News, Feb 19, 1996 by Jim DeTar

San Francisco--Intel is attempting to drive its Pentium Pro processor into the upper reaches of the workstation market as the company last week unveiled a strategic relationship with workstation vendor NeTpower. At a press event held in conjunction with the UniForum 96 conference here, the companies revealed details of their partnership.

One interesting aspect is the about-face done by NeTpower. In order to team with Intel, NeTpower has moved from the MIPS architecture, which it has supported since its founding three years ago, to Intel's Pentium Pro.

The competing Sparc architecture camp is not sitting still, however, as Ross Technology, which until now has only been a Sparc microprocessor and upgrade module vendor, announced it will begin selling fully-configured Sparc workstations--to be called the hyperSparc line--later this year. The company says it does not want to take on Sun Microsystems, however, but will fill gaps left at the 32-bit level as Sun migrates to 64-bit systems.

As reported (EN, Antenna, Feb. 12), Ross revealed it will use OEMs and resellers as its distribution partners for the planned line of workstations. The company also announced formation of a new business unit, dubbed the Ross Microcomputer Division, chartered to develop and sell the hyperStation motherboard upgrades and workstations. Sources close to the company said to expect the first systems by about mid-year, priced from $5,000 to $25,000 depending on configuration.

Meanwhile, under terms of Intel's agreement with NeTpower, those companies will work together to define, design and market high-end workstations to compete with today's Unix/RISC systems. At the same time, NeTpower is introducing its first family of Intel architecture-based Windows NT workstations--the Calisto line--named after a constellation, the company said. The workstations are priced ranging from $5,295 to $18,995 depending on configuration.

NeTpower CEO Robert C. Miller asserted that "Windows NT will replace Unix as the high-end performance operating system standard." He said his company's vision is "By making high-performance 3-D workstations affordable, they will be used everywhere," and the goal is that ultimately "Every user in the world could afford to buy 3-D graphics." Mr. Miller said that NeTpower will use Intel chipsets and motherboards in its workstations in addition to MPUs.

In terms of support for current MIPS customers, Mr. Miller--who was previously chairman, president and CEO of MIPS Computer Systems (now a Silicon Graphics subsidiary)--said that NeTpower will continue to make MIPS R4000-based workstations for the foreseeable future but will not offer the R10000 as it becomes available.

"A whole generation of Unix vendors are trying to fight off standards. What they don't realize is that standards drive volume," he said.

David L. House, Intel senior VP and GM of the Intel Enterprise Server Group, said that faster versions of Pentium Pro to be manufactured on a 0.25-micron process will be available to NeTpower at a later date. He noted that Intel intends to spend more than $4 billion on capital outlays in 1996 and currently has five fabs under construction, including the Hillsboro, Ore., site which is now projected to cost nearly $2 billion when it is completed.

"There is a new workstation industry and an old workstation industry," Mr. House said. "The old workstation industry used proprietary technology--for example IBM, Digital Equipment Corp., Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and SGI (Silicon Graphics). The new workstation industry is emerging," he said, based on x86 technology.

Mr. House quoted figures from market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) which, he said, projects 1.8 million workstations will be sold this year; that number is expected to increase to 5.3 million units in 1999, "more than three-fourths of them running Windows NT," he added. In 1994, 31 percent of all high-end workstations were Windows NT-based, according to IDC, and that figure is estimated to have grown to 43 percent in 1995.

NeTpower also unveiled a suite of support tools and services for its workstation OEM customers called Unite. Edward H. Frank, NeTpower's VP of engineering, said:"We think Unite is one of the things that's going to dramatically move people from Unix to NT."

During a question-and-answer session following the Intel/NeTpower event, Intel's Mr. House was asked about Intel's strategy in relation to Unix. Apparently reflecting the company's strategy to cover as many bases as possible, he responded: "We have a long-term relationship with Microsoft. We have other customers that use Unix, such as HP." (See related item in The Antenna.)

Calisto systems come standard in a mini-tower configuration that includes a 200MHz Pentium Pro, 256 kilobytes of dedicated second-level cache, 10/100 megabits Ethernet, Fast SCSI-2, 6x CD-ROM, 16-bit Soundblaster audio, 1.44-megabytes floppy drive, three 32-bit PCI expansion slots, two 32-bit ISA expansion slots, one PCI/ISA slot, three 5.25-inch drive bays and three 3.5-inch drive bays, two serial ports and one parallel port.