From: johnn@eskimo.celestial.com (John Navitsky)
Subject: Re: SPARCClassic (and other Sun announcments)
Summary: Sun announces SPARCclassic, SPARCstation LX & SPARCcenter 2000 
Organization: =>ESKIMO NORTH (206) 367-3837 SEATTLE, WA.<=
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 19:03:31 GMT

    [WARNING!  This is a lot longer than I had originally intended! ] 

In article <...> ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
>harthc@ntmtv.UUCP (Howard Hart) writes:
>
>>Just caught the official announcement this morning. $3995 for
>>a 15 inch color, 200MB SPARC (Tsunami). Did I just hear
>>a collective heart attack at Intel and Microsoft?

Well, I think the SPARCclassic is great, but I think it will be more 
detrimental to HP, DEC & IBM.  But, let's entertain this thought for a
while:

  Gateway 2000 66MHz 486DX2 EISA*     Sun SPARCclassic

  66MHz Intel 486 ("double clocked")  50MHz TI microSPARC
  8MB RAM                             16MB RAM using 16MB sims (to 96MB)
  340MB SCSI disk                     207MB SCSI-2 (to 22GB)
  ??                                  8 bit audio
  not included                        twisted pair ethernet (10mb/sec)
  2 serial ports                      2 serial ports
  1 parallel port                     1 parallel port
  ?xEISA slots (32MB/sec)             2xSBus slots (100MB/sec)
  16bit SVGA w/1MB                    8 bit color, 1024x768 or 1152x900
  14" CrystalScan                     15" color 1024x768, 76Hz refresh, 100dpi
  5.25" & 3.5" floppys                3.5" optional
  DOS 5.0                             Solaris 2.1
  MS-Windows 3.1                      Open Windows 3
  Choice of application               not included 
  Tower case                          IPC style box
                                      64bit memory bus

  $3,995                              $4,295
 
* Taken from page 32 of Oct 92 Computer Shopper

Sun stated that they were positioning the SPARCclassic against the 486 systems.
In my mind, Gatway is one of the more agressive price/feature companys (of the
major brand vendors), and is of course mail order.  With that said, I think
Sun's claims that the system is faster/better than a PC are true, and that
they are cheaper ... yes.  I wish Sun would drop the 207 disk
and replace with at least the 424.  It really seems silly when a fully loaded
OW3 can take 80MB of space.  The thing that I really feel is that to be
competative, Sun is going to have to be _twice_ as good.  They need to have
all as listed above, package it with a monitor that can handle the 1152x900,
put in a bigger disk, maybe a bit more memory and drop the price a bit.   
As I've said before, I think the system is great, and want Sun to get into
the low end, but I suspect that companys like Gateway sell a lot more $1,795
25MHz 486SX's than they do $3,995 66MHz 486DX2 EISA systems.  Of course, that
isn't the market Sun is looking for - they want the companys that would
otherwise put in high end PC's.  But I don't think they can really be viable
until they have both. 

The thing that this comparison does though is dampen the impact in other 
respects...  The SPARCclassic has almost the same performance specifications
as the SS2.  At the price they are selling them for, the SPARCclassic gets
a whole new light.

                 SPARCclassic          SS2 

SPECint92        26.4                  21.8
SPECfp92         21.0                  22.8
SPECrate_int92   626                   517
SPECrate_fp92    498.1                 541
MIPS             59.1                  28.5
MFLOPS           4.6                   4.3

Heres some misc info:  Power .4K VA, Operating acoustic noise 4.3 bels, idle
acoustic noise 4.2 bels.  Also, Sun will be offering a server version of this
system called the SPARCclassic server (suprise).  It's base configuration will
be 16MB RAM and a 1GB disk for $5,295.

>I'm a bit puzzled (only read wall street jnl so far).
>
>The price is $4k "in qtys of 12+".  Does that mean the list price
>is $4.5k or so?  What would the academic price be?  ($4k with 40% off
>would be quite attractive at $2400).

Sorry, Sun says they won't discount the SPARCclassic.  Qty 1 is $4,295.
It will have a 1yr return to factory warrenty (upgradable)

>I don't like the 15" color screen -- would have far preferred a bigger
>mono screen.  I do nothing with colour :-(
>Is there a 17+" mono option to replace the 15"?  (Is the ELC still
>what it used to be?)

I would have prefered a 16" color like those on the color IPC's.  There are
several monitors avaliable:  15" color, 16" mid-range color, 16" color,
19" color, 19" greyscale.

>Is Solaris 2 now standard with all these systems?

Solaris 2.1

>        -ans.
>-- 
>Ajay Shah, (213)749-8133, ajayshah@usc.edu

The SPARCclassic was not the only announcement.  Also announced:

   SPARCstation LX  (same processor and performance as classic)

   GX 8 bit accelerated graphics, 1024x768 or 
      1152 x 900 res, optional 1280x1024
      or 1600 x 1280 res or hardware double buffering*
   ISDN basic rate
   16 bit sound
   424MB disk
   16" color monitor
   
   $7,995 (this _can_ be discounted)

Sun indicated this system would be marketed towards PC CAD users or other
power user types.  Actually, this configuration is what I would have loved
to see positioned where the classic is.  Of course it may not be economically
feasable, but if it were I think it would still be worth it, even if Sun
made very little profit.  (actually I would say break even - at least for 
a while, but I seriously doubt them actually considering that!)

In the same computer shopper as I used for the above compairison, the had a
review of CAD workstations.  The price of the reviewed systems ranged from
$3,395-$6,995.  As in both of these comparions, the computers reviewed were
mail order systems.  In a recent experince, I've found systems from computer
stores to be nearly twice as much.  

They indicated that the microSPARC actually costs hundreds of dollars less than
a comprable 486 cpu and it has various other stuff in it (sbus logic? - memory
hazy here).  Both systems are on a single board and have an edge connector
to connect them to the backplane, making them ideal for imbeded or clone
applications.

The other hardware announcement was the SPARCcenter 2000:

   SPARCcenter 2000

   Multiprocessing system in data center configuration (not same cabinet
     as 690)
   2-20 processors (only to 8 initially - This probably being the point at
     which Solaris 2.1 & 2.2 stop giving significant benifit - We'll probably
     see Solaris 3.0 or such when they remove that limit)
   SuperSPARC 40MHz processors w/1MB SuperCache
   4-40 SBus
   64MB - 5GB RAM
   up to 1TB disk
   up to 3000 direct connect terminals
   XDbus - dual wide 64bit wide system busses with rates up to 640MB/sec,
     ~500 constaint load
   Starting price at $95K with 2 processors, 64MB RAM, 4.2GB disk

Ok, heres the specs: 

                        SPARCcenter 2000       SPARCclassic

Est. Transcations/sec   ~500   (8 way)         n/a
Estimated NFS ops/sec   n/a                    n/a
SPECrate_int92          8,047  (8 way)         626.2
SPECrate_fp92           10,600 (8 way)         498.1
AIM III (job/min)       1,631  (8 way)         158.0

The SPARCcenter 2000 uses XDbus (Xbus from Xerox) and system board which 
accept two processors, memory & sbus boards each.  They also have two serial
ports each as well.  It is fault resiliant (not tolerant) in that if you 
have more than one system board and/or boot disk, the system will go down,
and start up again, testing each component and masking out failed memory,
cpu, disk, etc and starting up without it.  Backplane jumpers have been
eliminated, diagnostic LEDs are present for all system boards, keyed connectors
to eliminate possible mis-installation and environmental sensors.  Sun 
seemed to indicated that this was a plug and play setup and ready for the
serious data center.  They coupled this with new features in Solaris 2.1 that
allow for remote installation of systems and a new 7x24 support just for the
SPARCcenter 2000.

Well, all in all I am impressed.  Not that any of these systems will blow 
your socks off, but that we now have decent, binary compatiable systems from
a $4,300 desktop with decent capabilities to a 8 processor system capable of
20 processors later.  The larger system capable of moving 640MB/sec of data
around on it's internal bus & pricing starting at $95K.  This, with a new
system (the LX) that gives us the fun features of the SS10 at a potentally
obtainable price.  All in all a warm fuzzy  :-)
-- 
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    ||   John Navitsky   `,`,`,`,   e-mail >>  johnn@eskimo.celestial.com  || 
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