Out in Front

Workstation/servers target 3-D graphics to multiprocessing

Hewlett-Packard rounds out its workstation and technical-server families with a range of new systems that start with value-priced PA-7300LC desktops and top out with 64-processor supercomputer-class servers. At the low end, the company's new B-Class desktops offer double the performance of HP's previous midrange offerings. The systems target the EDA market and come with a choice of 132- or 160-MHz processors. Depending on processor speed and cache configuration, prices range from $10,840 to $16,840, including 32 Mbytes of memory, a 17-in. monitor, and a 2-Gbyte disk. For 3-D applications, HP's PA-7300LC-based C-Class Model C160L includes the HP Visualize graphics controller and costs $19,840.

For high-end workstation applications, HP announced the Model J280, J-Class Power Deskside. The 180-MHz, PA-8000-based system supports as many as four displays and as much as 2 Gbytes of main memory. A model with 64 Mbytes of RAM, a 20-in. monitor, and a 2-Gbyte disk costs $38,500. HP plans to offer a dual-processor version of the system next year but claims that the single-processor system outperforms a Sun Ultra 2 with dual processors.

The new server-class products include the D-Class Entry Level Workgroup Server, the K-Class Midrange Technical Server, the S-Class Power Technical Server, and the X-Class Scalable Parallel Server. All of the new servers include one or more 64-bit PA-8000 processors. The D-, K, and S-class systems feature tightly coupled symmetric-multiprocessing architectures with as many as two, four, and 16 processors, respectively. Prices range from around $50,000 to $180,000 for a quad-processor S-Class offering. At the high end, the X-Class system can include as many as 64 processors using a cache-coherent NUMA (nonuniform-memory-access) architecture. The system leverages HP's Coherent Toroidal Interconnect, which the company based on the IEEE SCI (Scalable Coherent Interconnect) multiprocessing standard. A 16-processor system with 1 Gbyte of memory costs $718,000. —by Maury Wright

Hewlett-Packard, Santa Clara, CA. (408) 246-4300.