Sun Microsystems Inc last week duly weighed in with a 16 colour workstation – cryptically dubbed the Sparcstation IPC – to bridge the gap between the Sparcstation SLC at the very low-end and the Sparcstation 1+, touting it as a competitor to personal computers (CI No 1,476) and Wayne Rosing, vice-president of desktop systems and graphics in the US, explained that IPC stood for It ain’t a PC. Rosing said the design of the IPC – it weighs 12 lbs, and measures 9.5 by 10.5 by 4 – which resembles a lunchbox rather than the Sparcstation 1’s pizza box, took one and a half years to develop, and contains fewer components than most PCs. It takes only 65W of power to run less audio noise – and Sun is thought to be working on attaching a 1m pixel flat screen. Sun expects to ship 7,500 IPCs by the end of September, and president Scott McNealy claims that 100,000 Sun Sparc machines have now been installed, with a further 250,000 expected to ship over the next 12 months. Citing market analyst Alex Brown, he said that Sparc now has around 74% of the RISC market, up from 61% in 1989, with MIPS Computer Systems at 16%, down from 22%, Hewlett-Packard with 3%, down from 6%, IBM with 2%, down from 4%, and others 4%, down from 6% – presumably by number rather than by value because Hewlett-Packard machines are much more expensive than Sun’s. The workstation, rated at 15.8 MIPS, 1.7 MFLOPS and a Specmark of 10.0, comes with two SBus slots, from 8Mb to 24Mb memory, 207Mb disk, a 3.5 floppy drive and costs UKP8,000, or $10,000. Despite the price advantages that they bring, all Sun’s recent workstation releases have been variations on a theme, namely the Sparcstation 1, which is now well over a year old, Sunwatchers are awaiting a new workstation series which can make up some of the performance ground that the company has lost to its competitors over the last 12 months or so. Talk is of a Sparcstation 2 with models delivering up to 25 MIPS, with base prices between $9,000 and $12,000 for workstations with from 8Mb to 60Mb memory, up to 300Mb disk and mono and colour monitors, for launch by the end of the summer. The company will not launch the Unix System V.4 release of SunOS before next year. On Sun’s distribution agreements with those three US retailers; Intelligent Electronics Inc of Exton, Pennsylvania – which controls 20% of all computer dealerships in the US via its subsidiaries and franchisees – MicroAge Inc of Tempe, Arizona, and Nynex Business Information Systems Co, White Plains, New York, Joe Roebuck, vice-president of Sun’s field operations warned that we are not to understand these dealer chains as going after the high street walk-in traffic. According to MicroAge chairman Alan Held, initial sales will be primarily to the technical engineering crowd. Other corporate users that have chosen Sun’s Sparc systems include Merrill Lynch, which will use the new Sparcstation IPC as a trader’s workstation, Dunkin Donuts, which will rely on Suns for managing its central database functions, while Carnival Cruise Lines is automating several of its cruise operations with Sparcstations. And the Portland Trailblazers will use Sun systems for a new ticketing and information system.
