Compagnie des Machines Bull SA has followed IBM Corp in introducing five new DPX/20 servers and an entry-level two-dimensional color graphics diskless workstation based on the Power RISC architecture and a RAID technology disk array subsystem – presumably the CLARiiON one it its buying OEM from Data General Corp (CI No 2,110). The five new DPX/20 models comprise two high-end desktop models, the 50MHz 460 and the 62MHz 470, a mid-range deskside model 640 and two high-end rack-mounted systems, the models 810 and 840. The desktop models, says Bull, provide performance up to twice that of the existing 400 Series entry model and have a quadrupled cache buffer of 32Kb. Standard features for the intermediate range Model 640 include 2Gb of fixed disk and CD-ROM storage, an integrated SCSI adaptor, and eight Micro Channel slots. The Model 640 has a suggested price of $62,180. The rack-mounted models have an expanded 64Kb data cache, a 32Kb instruction cache and, as standard on the Model 840, two 80Mbps per second input-output interfaces. They also come equipped with a 1.44Mb floppy, CD-ROM drive, 5Gb 8mm tape drive, four 1Gb SCSI-2 hard files and an SCSI-2 controller. The Model 810 is suggested to sell for $122,180. The Model 105 two-dimensional graphics workstation, with a suggested price in France of $5,450, is one of the lowest priced in the industry. The new DAS 2000 disk array subsystem stores up to 24Gb in a single subsystem. Up to 20 drives, either 500Mb or 1.2Gb SCSI-2 3.5 drives, can be configured in a cabinet small enough to fit under a desk, Bull said. One or two subsystems can be configured on a single SCSI system bus.
