Raising its workstation game a few more notches, Sun Microsystems Inc has added 75MHz SuperSparc II parts to its current high-end desktops, the Sparcstation 20 series, giving a 35% SPECint92 performance boost. And it is re-casting its low end machines, killing off the ultra low-cost SparcClassic, the last of the conventional Sparcsystems, in favour of a $4,000 SparcStation 4, now housed in the same pizza-box unit as the rest of the Sparcstation line. The 126 SPECint92 Sparcstation 20 Model 71 uniprocessor puts Sun among the top tier integer players, although floating-point performance, at 121 SPECfp92 is seen as only adequate by industry watchers; it is still lower than the Sparcstation 20 HS11 100MHz HyperSparc box. With 32Mb RAM, 1Gb disk and a 20 screen it costs $19,800. A two-way 712MP is rated at 5,726 and 5,439 SPECrate_int92 and SPECrate_fp92 and costs $25,300 with 64Mb RAM and 1Gb disk. Server versions are from $18,300 and $28,800 respectively. Processor upgrades that take up the other Mbus slot in the housing are $9,000. Power and space limit Sun to 50MHz quad processor configurations so far, a problem HyperSparc does not have. Previous high-end models used 60MHz SuperSparc IIs. Sun has cut its three-dimensional ZX graphics accelerator for Sparcstation 20 and 5s to $9,000 and its Sparcstation 20ZX Model 61 and 5ZX to $19,500 and $16,000 respectively. As expected, Sun has decided not to carry its ultra low-cost line forward at the same price point. A new $4,000 Sparcstation 4 comes in for the $3,000 SparcClassic. It runs a 70MHz microSparc II performing 57 SPECint92 and 47 SPECfp92 with an 8-bit pixel accelerator instead of SparcClassic’s colour frame buffer. With a single Sbus slot, 15 screen, 16Mb RAM and 535Mb disk the desktop is $4,000 from mid-month. Although squeezing margin on every last component, Sun and other vendors are going to have an increasingly difficult job fending off fully-configured 90MHz, 100MHz and perhaps 120MHz Pentiums at $3,000 or less, analysts say. Lower down, Sun is replacing its SparcClassic X terminal with the Sparc Xterminal 1, a 1,280 by 1,024 screen driven by a 50MHz microSparc with 8Mb to 128Mb of memory and X-Terminal 2.1 software, rated at 1.8 to 2.4 Xmarks; it will be out at the end of the month at $2,400.
