Digital Equipment Corp, in bullish mood about the launch of its AlphaStation 600 workstations next week, says the 300MHz 21164 processors will deliver ‘blazing’ speed, and ‘shatter’ all workstation performance records. The 5/266MHz and the 5/300MHz support a high-performance memory subsystem based on a 256-bit memory bus, about three times the bandwith of Digital’s previous high-end workstations. Both support 64-bit PCI bus, running at 267Mb per second. Digital glossed over suggestions that the bus would still only run at around a third of the processor clock speed, claiming the 32-bit version ran at 110MHz. It is pitching these machines at the high-end graphics market, typically mechanical and electronic design automation, geographic information systems and science and research, launching a new mid-range three-dimensional graphics accelerator series, ZLXp-L, and offering Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp’s high-end Freedom Series. The 5/266 is out now at ú34,000 for a complete system including 128Mb RAM, 2Mb cache, and 1Gb disk, with either Digital Unix or OpenVMS operating systems; the 300MHz version will be available in December for an extra ú10,000.
