September 21, 1998 Design News

Hot Products

Senior Editor Julie Anne Schofield picks noteworthy workstations

UNIX workstation price slashed 36%

At SIGGRAPH '98, Silicon Graphics announced price reductions on several product lines including the OCTANEr power workstation line. In May, the company introduced the 250-MHz MIPS R10000 OCTANE/SSE, which features the company's crossbar switch architecture and high-performance E-Series graphics. The system's price, effective in August, was $24,995. Standard features include the IRIXr 6.5 operating system, 1 Mbyte of secondary cache, 128 Mbytes of memory, 4-Gbyte ultra-fast SCSI hard disk, and a 20-inch monitor.
Silicon Graphics Computer Systems
Product Code 4414

Workstation targets compute-intensive applications

New this fall, IBM's IntelliStation Z Pro Workstation uses the 450-MHz Pentium II Xeon processor's fast 512-kbyte L2 cache to improve the performance of compute- and graphics-intensive applications. The unit is certified on more than 120 different Windows NT workstation applications, including such CAD programs as Pro/ENGINEER, ANSYS, Catia V5, and Unigraphics. In fact, IBM spokespersons say that Pro/ENGINEER and ANSYS work 10 to 20% faster on Z Pro than on competing workstations. Features include: up to 2 Gbytes 100-MHz SDRAM; Ultra 2 SCSI, 80-Mbytes/sec transfer rate; 7 full-length slots; and 7 expansion bays for 81.9 Gbytes storage capacity. Intergraph's Intense Pro-3600 graphics engine with 64-Mbyte texture memory offloads the CPU.
IBM
Product Code 4415

Dual Pentium II Xeons power new workstation

CAD users can take advantage of the two Pentium II Xeon processors in the Dell Precision^TM WorkStation 610. The unit can be custom configured in dozens of ways including the following options: up to 54 Gbytes of hard-drive capacity; up to 2 Gbytes of 100-MHz SDRAM; full-speed 512-kbyte or 1-Mbyte cache; Intergraph Intense 3DPro 3410GT OpenGL AGP-enabled graphics accelerator; Ultra2/Wide SCSI 10,000-rpm hard drive; up to two Ultra2/Wide 18-Gbyte or four 9-Gbyte SCSI hard drives offering 80-Mbytes/sec transfer rates; and security features including chassis intrusion, thermal monitoring, and electronic serial tagging of components.
Dell Computer Corp.
Product Code 4418

UltraSPARC units offer flexibility

Two new offerings from Sun widen the company's selection of high-performance graphical computing systems. The 333-MHz version of the Ultra^TM 10 workstation comes with the Sun Elite3D^TM m3 graphics accelerator, four times the cache of the original Ultra 10, and twice the cache size of Compaq's or Hewlett-Packard's best offerings, according to Sun. With a 2-Mbyte cache, 128 Mbytes of DRAM, a 4.3-Gbyte hard drive, and 19-inch monitor, the Ultra 10 costs $11,095. The 4-way Ultra 450 is Sun's first workstation to provide up to 4 Gbytes of memory, allowing users to manipulate extremely large data sets. It offers the company's highest levels of processor and I/O expendability, can support two Sun Elite3D m6 graphics cards, and can scale to include up to four 300-MHz UltraSPARC II processors. With one graphics card, two processors, 512 Mbytes of memory, two 9-Gbyte hard drives, and a 21-inch monitor, the Ultra 450 costs $32,865. Both workstations take advantage of the Solaris^TM operating environment and the company's UltraSPARC processor technology to maintain 100% binary compatibility across Sun's entire line of scalable systems.
Sun Microsystems Inc.
Product Code 4417

E&S graphics technology speeds NT workstation

Siemens Nixdorf is offering Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.'s newly announced AccelGALAXY^TM graphics subsystem in its CELSIUS Windows NT workstation family. Powered by E&S's REALimage 2000 graphics acceleration technology, AccelGALAXY supports double-buffered resolutions up to 1,920 3 1,080 pixels. Other features include dual-monitor support, 24-bit Z buffer, 24-bit color, full stereo, window IDs, stencils, alpha blending, per-pixel depth cueing, and local texture storage for up to 16 Mbytes. The CELSIUS workstations incorporate Intel's new 440GX AGP chip set and one or two Pentium II Xeon 400-MHz processors.
Siemens Nixdorf
Product Code 4419

Low-end unit does entry-level 3D

The E-5200 Windows NT workstation from Gateway suits 2D and entry-level 3D CAD applications. It is available with either single or dual Pentium II processors at speeds of 300, 333, 350, or 400 MHz. To ensure peak performance, the unit incorporates the Intel 82440BX chip set, which increases the front-side bus speed to 100 MHz. Typical configurations and prices are: single 350-MHz processor, 64 Mbytes SDRAM, 8-Mbyte AccelGraphics Permedia 2 graphics accelerator, and 6.4-Gbytes UATA hard drive for $2,599; single 400-MHz processor, 128 Mbytes SDRAM, 8-Mbyte AccelGraphics Permedia 2 graphics accelerator, and 9-Gbyte SCSI hard drive for $4,104; and dual 400-MHz processors, 256 Mbytes SDRAM, AccelECLIPSE II graphics accelerator, and 9-Gbyte SCSI hard drive for $6,813. Above prices include monitor. Gateway
Product Code 4416

NT workstation speeds graphics

Hewlett-Packard's dual-processor-capable HP Kayak XW PC Workstation marks the debut of the company's HP VISUALIZE fx6 graphics for Microsoft Windows NT. This graphics technology has been available for UNIX systems from HP since September 1997. The NT PC workstation version provides DMA (direct memory access) support, full AGP 23 support, and optional dual texture engines with 32-Mbytes SDRAM texture memory. Benchmarks are impressive. HP reports that the Kayak XW achieves 181 Viewperf CDRS-03 and 52.05 Viewperf A Wadvs-01, and outperformed other Windows NT 3D graphics accelerators in eight additional benchmarks, including the Indy-3D MCAD and animation viewsets. A unit featuring a 400-MHz Pentium II Xeon processor, Intel's 440GX AGP chip set, HP VISUALIZE fx6 graphics, 128 Mbytes SDRAM, and a 4.5-Gbyte hard-disk drive will be available in October for $12,000.
Hewlett-Packard:
Product Code 4413

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