IBM rolls NC design kit; Cisco shows thin servers

Electronic News, June 16, 1997 by Sarah Cohen

Kimball Brown of Dataquest said that what "worries" him about the plethora of NC reference designs from companies such as IBM, Digital, Sun and Intel (although Intel has a higher priced version of the NC reference design called the Net PC reference design) is "will they be compatible with whatever Sun is doing? Digital's pushing the StrongARM chip, IBM the PowerPC, but there has to be a testing mechanism and a standard...so that these reference designs run the software the same way."

Steve Longoria, network computer platform marketing manager, responded to Mr. Brown's worry by saying that the standard to which Mr. Brown refers is Java. "Everyone can test standard APIs on Java, even though Java is still emerging." Mr. Brown pointed out that Java is only a year old and still has bugs--Microsoft and Netscape recently have reported that they've corrected various security problems within the Java programming language.

However, like many others, IBM stands in support of the new language. Its NC development kit includes a Java virtual machine as well as smart card support and Lotus productivity software. "Our design is optimized to run Java applications written to the desktop, right down to the user interface," said Jesse Parker, IBM directory of marketing, microelectronics.

The NC development kit features the PowerPC 603e at speeds of 150 to 200MHz, a 27-82660 system controller for PCI bridge, memory and L2 cache, EDO SIMM memory subsystem (8MB to 64MB), board design technical specifications, optional L2 cache up to 512KB, up to 512KB flash ROM, integrated 10/100M Ethernet, smart card reader and PCI video.

The base package includes a PowerPC 603e processor, core logic chipset, system software and Lotus Java business productivity applications, and is priced up to $199 for a 200MHz package in quantities of 1,000. The base kit is expected to be available in July.

Meanwhile, Cisco announced that it is planning a new class of "thin servers" based on the PowerPC 603e. The Micro NC Server is intended to support localized services in order to reduce network traffic congestion and provide fast access to routine applets used for database and spreadsheet programs. Cicso hopes this server will address concerns about how NCs in a workgroup will initially "boot" and download information from large servers without creating traffic jams at the workgroup or long waits at the desktop.