HP Takes the Lead in Workstation Peformance

Peter Lowber

In the ever-changing workstation market, Hewlett-Packard has leapfrogged ahead in the category of $25,000-$50,000 midrange Unix RISC machines. The company is also looking to reach users who want a less expensive system: HP has announced a strategy to develop a line of Intel-based Windows NT personal workstations for the low-end desktop market.

For the midrange market, which is still dominated by RISC Unix workstations with sizzling 3-D graphics, HP's Visualize Power Desktops, announced in June, come in two models, both of which use the powerful 64-bit HP PA-8000 processor. HP's Visualize C160 uses the 160-MHz PA-8000, and the C180 uses the 180-MHz version. HP has tripled its perfor mance at similar price levels over its C-Class predecessors, which use HP PA-7200 microprocessors and are upgradable to the new PA-8000 desktops by swapping in a new board.

For the first time in several years, HP has surpassed its competitors, including Digital's fastest Alpha workstation. At 18.7 SPECfp95, the C180 is more than 30 percent faster than Digital's AlphaStation 500/400 (14 SPECfp95), and more than 50 percent faster than SGI's Indigo2/10000 (estimated 12.3 SPECfp95). The C180 comes with HP's new 3-D Visualize-48XP graphics subsystem, which is twice as fast as HP's Visualize-48 (HP's leading graphics subsystem before the June announcement). At around $50,000, the C180 Visualize-48XP is priced similarly to SGI's Indigo2/10000 Maximum Impact but offers graphics performance that's up to three times faster.

The HP C160 is positioned to gain market share in the midrange category. With an entry price of $27,000 (20-inch color display, 64-MB memory, 2-GB disk, 2-D graphics), the C160 offers almost twice the performance o f Sun's Ultra 1, with significant performance benefits over Digital and SGI hardware at similar prices ( see the table ).

The PA-8000 not only gives HP a big boost against its traditional RISC Unix competitors. It reestablishes an almost 3x performance lead over Intel (200-MHz Pentium Pro) in the midrange and high-end technical markets (as indicated by the Pentium Pro's SPECfp95 results of 6.8). For commercial applications, however, Intel's Pentium Pro is within striking distance (as indicated by SPECint95 results of 8.1).

For low-end technical desktops, the Pentium Pro has a serious performance advantage over RISC desktops. The high-performing RISC desktops, like those based on the PA-8000, cannot compete at the low-end price levels. DataPro believes that HP's decision to introduce an Intel-based Windows NT personal workstation will enable HP to compete in this burgeoning market, where SGI and Sun, neither of which supports NT, will lose ground.

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C omparing Midrange Workstations

Vendor
       
HP
            
Digital
       
SGI
            
Sun



Model
        C160          AlphaStation  Indigo         Ultra 1Model 170
             Visualize-EG  500/333       2/10000


Processor
    PA-8000       Alpha 21164   MIPS R10000    UltraSPARC
             160-MHz       333-MHz       200-MHz        167-MHz


SPECint95
    10.4          8.8           8.9            6.2


SPECfp95
     16.3          11.6          12.3           9.1


Entry price*
 $27,000       $25,800       $34,000        $22,995
                                         (Solid Impact)


*
 Price for 20-inch color display, 64-MB RAM, 2-D graphics when available