IBM has decided to mix it in the gutter with Sun Microsystems Inc and is working on an RS/5000 Unix workstation that can be sold for from under $5,000 to $35,000 at the top, Computer Reseller News reports. The paper quotes Phil Hester, IBM’s director of advanced workstation engineering, saying that the company plans to shrink the seven custom VLSI chips spread over multiple boards in the RS/6000 down to a single planar board for use in the RS/5000. The new small-footprint Micro Channel workstations will offer scaled-down features in a compact design, but will retain application binary interface compatibility with RS/6000 line and run existing applications. The RS/5000 is being designed to compete with the Sparcstation SLC as an office workstation, and will have less capacity and more limited graphics than the RS/6000. The RS/5000s will use a higher-integration version of the chip set in the RS/6000 and will incorporate the Micro Channel Level II bus from its big brother. A modular version of AIX Unix will be offered with the new machine so that users can take only the modules they need and don’t fill the limited memory and disk up with unwanted operating system code. IBM is said to have targeted a summer 1991 launch for the RS/5000 but observers expect the same kind of delays that beset the RS/6000, and that it may not start shipping until January next year. The prices being talked about for the RS/5000 will make the high-end PS/2 look very overpriced.
