BENCHTEST SPARCstation 1 As the high-end PC world tends more and more to have the flavour of , so manufacturers are styling their low-end' machines to tempt the top of the PC and Mac markets. In this promised follow-up to the May issue's preview of Sun's new range of workstations, Peter Jackson presents a full Benchtest of the SPARCstation 1.

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`Welcome To The New World' was the between the SPARCstation 1 and a fast year as never before. And the reasons for slogan plastered across Sun 80386-based PC. And now that their this are not too tricky to spot. Microsystems' rather childlike publicity prices for equivalent configurations are First there is the inexorable progress of material for its big launch. But to the un- similar too, the workstation manufac- technology, particularly in the areas of biased observer it looked more like a turers need to changg their marketing RISC processing and microelectronic or continuation of the Old World by other strategies to sell more machines; but architectural speed-ups for older proces- means, with two new ranges built around they also need to support their existing sors. The arrival of RISC chips such as the SPARC RISC chip and Motorola's users with more powerful systems, and the MIPS Computer processor in DEC's 68030, and compatible with earlier Sun 4 maintain their air of superiority over the new DECStation 3100, the Motorola and Sun 3 machines respectively. upstart PCs. 88000 in Tektronix's new workstation However, the new systems do In terms of both technology and line, and faster versions of the SPARC demonstrate very clearly that the days of marketing, the workstation market is from LSI, Cypress and Solbourne, have cost-no-object workstations are gone, in changing more rapidly than ever. But is made it possible for manufacturers to put the face of competition from high-end there really any reason for long-standing together workstations with a real price personal computers with 80386 and MS-DOS and users to jump and performance advantage over the ex- 68030 processors driving big screens across the increasingly blurred boundary isting competition. and graphical user interfaces. The into the mysterious world of Unix And that gives new entrants to the SPARCstation 1 and the Sun 3/80, the workstations, when the power of their market a chance. While it would not be two most significant new low-end own machines seems to be following a feasible to build a me-too 68020-based workstations, both borrow PC-style smooth rising curve in any case? The workstation to compete with Sun's in- design and manufacturing techniques to workstation vendors must think so, judg- stalled base and technological ex- offer true workstation performance at ing by the feverish activity in this seg- perience, building a faster, cheaper prices competitive with those high-end ment of the market over recent months, machine using Sun's own SPARC RISC PCs and . but what precisely is it that will cause technology, or someone else's RISC For example, the big VME card-cage people to make the move? technology, gives newcomers a real has gone like the S100 bus of competitive chance. yesteryear, replaced by compact single- This, of course, also ties in with the board designs using big low-power cus- In perspective convergence of Unix versions and the tom chips and surface-mount technol- At the same time Sun launched its new emergence of standard graphical user ogy. This makes the machines cheaper range of machines, it was announced that interfaces — and, more importantly, ap- and easier to build and test automatically Hewlett-Packard had agreed to take over plication programming interfaces () — Sun has geared up to produce one Sun's long-standing arch-rival, Apollo — for graphics-based Unix applications. SPARCstation 1, for example, every four Computer. Just before the launch, There may be two camps of Unix system minutes. The systems are now housed Businessland had announced that it was vendors under the Open Software Foun- in compact desktop enclosures smaller to sell the $US10,000 NeXT workstation dation (OSF) and Unix International ban- than an 80386-based PC or a Mac II, in its US stores. And prior to that, in turn, ners, but two standard operating sys- with internal floppy and hard disks, and DEC had launched a range of worksta- tems and two graphical user interfaces everything else built in. tions that set new standards in terms of a for programmers to address is preferable There are actually more technological newly minted unit of measurement, dol- to the previous confusion of 200 different similarities than differences between the lars per mips. In other words, the worksta- and incompatible Unix versions. new Sun 3/80 and Macintosh IIx, and tion business is humming with activity this By the end of this year there will be just two choices for Unix system vendors. One is AT&T and Unix International's System V Release 4.0 with the Open Look user interface developed jointly by AT&T and Sun. The other is OSF's OSF/1 with the OSF/ user interface built around DEC Windows and the Presentation Manager for X Window from Hewlett-Packard and . The major software vendors who are not already committed to Unix — and a surprising number, including Ashton- Tate, Lotus, WordPerfect, Samna Inter- national, Borland and Microsoft already are — can now develop for a stationary target, with a user interface and operat- ing system that will be common across a wide range of processors, performance levels and prices. That is an attractive prospect for developers, and the availability to MS-DOS-style software will be an important boost for the hardware manufacturers in their attempts to sell The back of the SPARCstation 1 is as neat as the front, with a large range of ports the concept of workstations as the natural upgrade from PCs and Macin- well laid out and easy to reach toshes.

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Another boost will be the lack of market transferred to inherently faster semi- However, there is less reason for penetration of OS/2, combined with that conductor technologies like bi-polar Macintosh users to switch to Unix at operating system's incompatibility with logic or Gallium Arsenide, without present. There is no chance at all of a MS-DOS and its inability to fully support losing full binary software compatibility. Sun system running Macintosh software, even the 80386, let alone a new genera- If Sun can convert all its users to and it is the software that has allowed tion of high-performance RISC proces- SPARC, it can offer them an indefinite Apple to get away with technological sors. If MS-DOS users are being asked growth path without having to change conservatism and high prices of the to make the jump to an incompatible any of their software. And in the mean- Macintosh line so far. On the other hand, operating system just to get more time, the low cost of the processor al- give a machine like the 3/80 a set of memory for applications and multi-task- lows the company to create a new low- major graphics-based applications, com- ing, then why not go to Unix? It is just as priced entry-level machine that offers bine them with the true multi-tasking that incompatible with MS-DOS, although it 12.5 mips performance — around twice the Macintosh does not yet have, and it makes a better job of running multiple that of a 33MHz 80386 system — at a could be a different story. MS-170S emulations simultaneously lower price. There is no doubt that the than OS/2 can, does multi-tasking, and The excitement around the entry-level SPARCstation 1 and the Sun 3/80 are is available on more powerful hardware SPARCstation 1 conceals another sig- significant machines. They bring RISC than the 80386 machines that are nificant entry in the shape of the Sun performance down to desktop PC size OS/2's current pinnacle. And now, with 3/80. This is based on the same and price levels, and the 3/80 pits tech- the prospect of shrink-wrapped graphics- 68030/68882 combination as the Macin- nological excellence against Apple's based Unix applications from big-name tosh Ilcx and Ilx, but at a faster clock marketing clout. The world of worksta- vendors, the story looks even better — speed and with RAM caching for even tions is getting exciting and competitive as long as the workstation makers' indis- greater throughput. With 4Mbytes of — as Hewlett-Packard's proposed buy- putably talented engineers can deliver RAM and a bigger monochrome screen out of a major competitor proves. high performance at the right price. than the Apple standard, the hard-disk- In the end, that is the reason for Sun's less Sun 3/80 at $10,500 compares emphasis on the SPARC concept. The favourably with both the Ilx and Ilcx. In- Hardware SPARC chip set in its current incarna- deed, even considering the recent Apple The SPARCstation 1 shares its case tion is cheap to make — $US100 or price cuts, the Sun 3/80 with its 17in design with the Sun 3/80. It measures less for a 25MHz set from Fujitsu — monochrome display undercuts a 40.5cm square, and is only about as and is designed to be easily scaled screenless Macintosh Ilx with the same high as a half-height floppy disk drive, down in size for higher speed, or to be RAM capacity by $795 . but still includes all the electronics, a BENCHTEST

A LSI 20MHz SPARC processor Two RS-232 ports C Ethernet port External SCSI connector E Three SBus slots F AMD 7900 Ethernet controller G NCR 53C90 SCSI controller H Main board power input Floppy disk interface J 16 SIMM slots 8-64Mbyte capacity K Two SCSI hard disk connectors L Hard disk power outputs M Cache and bus controllers N Cache RAM

B Two Zilog SCC serial port controllers

p Custom 3167 numeric coprocessor Q Sound output jack R Sound I/O port S Keyboard connector

floppy drive, and one or two hard disk covered by blanking plates and one hold- 7.5cm — and the system can take three drives; unlike other Sun systems, the ing the video output for the monitor. The of them to form a second deck of cir- sleek lines of the system unit are not SPARCstation 1 may be a single-board cuitry. spoiled by the need for an external computer at bottom, but there are ob- In a sense, this layout mirrors what shoebox to hold the disk drives. viously some complications. happened to personal computers. The The resemblance to a diskless Opening up the case reveals a neat early machines used the S100 card- workstation is strengthened by the odd and simple internal arrangement. The cage approach, the processor being just positioning of the single 1.44Mbyte PC- single main circuit board, about the size another board in a slot, and manufac- compatible floppy drive, which instead of of an A4 sheet of paper, sits at the rear turers only went for cheaper single- being on the front panel is around the of the case behind the floppy drive and board designs with proprietary on-board corner on the right-hand side. the hard disk bays, and these drives expansion slots as chip hardware im- Presumably Sun does not want to en- plug into sockets on the opposite side of proved. Now Sun has abandoned the courage its use for data transfer, bearing the main board from the external con- bulky VME card-cage for this entry-level in mind the company's 'Network is the nectors. The power supply is behind the machine, and has done the same for the Computer' motto. floppy drive on the right-hand side, and 68030-based Sun 3/80, launched at the A brief look at the rear shows that the the whole arrangement fits together like same time. overall size has been reduced by dump- tiled windows on a screen. The A4-sized circuit board is a typical ing the traditional VME card-cage of other The reason for the second row of rear- example of the state of the hardware Sun machines and going for a single- panel socket holes also becomes clear designer's art as we approach the board design. The main external inter- at a glance; the SPARCstation 1's ex- 1990s. There are almost no simple 'glue' faces for the system (comprising a SCSI pansion slots run end-to-end across the logic chips or conventional components; daisychain socket, an Ethernet interface, centre of the main circuit board, and the the chips are surface-mounted and two standard 25-pin RS-232 ports, DIN video board occupies one of these sock- direct-soldered rather than socketed, sockets for the keyboard and for sound ets in a way that allows it to lie horizon- and thick-film resistors are attached to input and output, and a standard sound tally on top of the main board in an the underside of the board where neces- output jack) run along the base of the electronic sandwich. This is like the ex- sary so as not to clutter up the top sur- back panel in typical single-board com- pansion board layout in a Macintosh SE, face with the familiar striped cylinders of puter style. Above this, however, is space but the SPARCstation 1's boards are old-fashioned carbon resistors. for a second tier of three connectors, two smaller — postcard-sized at 12.7cm by The SPARC processor and its corn-

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SPARC processor is labelled 'Slave Specifications Only', indicating that the other slots can accept 'bus master' boards just as IBM's Processor: LSI-built SPARC RISC processor, 20MHz Micro Channel architecture and Apple's Coprocessor: Weitek 3167, customised for SPARC NuBus can. This should raise hopes of RAM: 64k 25ns static cache RAM; 8Mbytes main RAM expand- sophisticated coprocessor network con- able to 16Mbytes trollers and other intelligent boards that Mass storage: Single 1.44Mbyte 3.5in floppy drive; one or two 104Mbyte can share system resources with the 3.5in SCSI/2 hard disks SPARC. Keyboard: 94 or 113 keys, without or with numeric keypad The basic video hardware fits on one of Mouse: Three-button optical the tiny postcard-sized SBus boards. It Display: 1152 by 900 in 256 colours or shades of grey; optional comprises a single AMD 81458 graphics GX accelerator; 16, 17 or 19in monitor processor, a megabyte of 64k by four Standard interfaces: Two RS-232 serial ports, Ethernet interface, SCSI/2 inter- dedicated video RAM chips mounted in face, sound I/O and sound output jacks, keyboard single-in-line packages, and a custom bus Expansion: Three internal proprietary SBus slots, external SCSI controller and buffering chip. This custom disk box chip, simply labelled S4 CACHE with a Operating software: SunOS 4, including Open Look, SunView, X.View, Sun copyright notice, will be made avail- X.11/NeWS, NFS, TCP/IP; Sun Desk Set utilities able along with the full SBus specification to any third-party manufacturer who wants to produce an expansion board for the panion numeric coprocessor, a custom workstation) and the AMD 7990 Ethernet machine. Again, this is similar to Apple's 'SPARC-aware' version of Weitek's controller make up the set. approach of supplying the basic hardware single-chip 3167 Abacus, occupy one The 53C90 is significant because it im- required for any NuBus expansion board corner of the board. On the sample board plements the SCSI/2 standard — unlike to communicate with the bus, making the SPARC chip was a Fujitsu S25 pack- the older 53C80 chip used in every board design a lot simpler. age labelled at 25MHz, although the Macintosh from the Plus to the IIx — and With either graphics system in place, production models will have the LSI Logic offers much higher data transfer rates. the SPARCstation 1 drives a variety of implementation running at 20MHz and the For example, the theoretical maximum monitors at the usual Sun resolution of faster 25MHz SPARCstation 300 will use transfer rate of the Sun implementation 1152 by 900 in up to 256 colours or a SPARC chip set from Cypress. The is 4.8Mbytes per second, compared with shades of grey. One new monitor, a 17in special Weitek coprocessor in the the 1.5Mbytes per second offered by the grey-scale model, has been added to the SPARCstation 1 runs at the same 20MHz 53C80 but never achieved even by the existing range of Sun monitors, which speed as the integer processor, and ac- Macintosh IIx. comprises 16in colour and 19in tually includes the SPARC floating-point Other standard circuitry implements the monochrome and colour models. All the controller hardware alongside the usual serial ports — it is nice to see that monitors have the same resolution and 3167 numeric hardware. The appearance Zilog's 8330 SCC design is still getting the same 66Hz non-interlaced refresh of this custom chip from Weitek, just to some use, albeit in different packaging rate, and can be used unchanged with support Sun and other SPARC-based — and the sound hardware. The addition any Sun video board. products, shows the market significance of sound input and output, along with a The main circuit board has connectors of RISC in general and SPARC in par- built-in loudspeaker, is another major for the floppy drive and for two internal ticular. change in the SPARCstation 1 design SCSI hard disks, and also provides Next to the SPARC is an array of 25ns and another way in which the overall power supply sockets for all the drives. static RAM chips acting as a RAM concept of this machine (and even more This means that the power for the whole cache, with a custom Sun-labelled obviously the 68030-based Sun 3/80) system, apart from the monitor, is routed cache controller chip nearby. The recalls the Macintosh IIx raised to a through the circuit board. However, since SPARCstation 1 has 64k of cache RAM higher power. Sun points to such the main board only consumes 12W, in total, speeding up access to the main developments as voice mail, where ver- and a complete system with two hard banks of RAM that occupy around a third bal messages can be attached to disks and a power-hungry graphics ac- of the total board area. There are 16 electronic ones passing over a mixed celerator only consumes 85W, that is not slots for single-in-line memory modules voice and data network, but as with the too risky. (SIMMs) altogether, which can provide Macintosh IIx the demonstration The actual hard disks supplied are up to 16Mbytes of RAM using current software only plays digitised music at 3.5in half-height drives built by Quantum technology. When 4Mbit chips are avail- present. and hold 104Mbytes each, for a total in- able to replace the 1 Mbit chips used on The expansion bus in the SPARC- ternal storage capacity of 208Mbytes. the eight SIMMs that form the station 1 is a new one called SBus, not And adding a three-button optical mouse SPARCstation 1's standard 8Mbytes of compatible with VME or with the minia- built by MSC, and one of Sun's standard RAM, that maximum capacity will rise to ture P4 bus introduced in the Sun 4/110 94-key or 113-key keyboards, completes 64Mbytes. to give expansion boards — and par- the SPARCstation 1 system. The other three large custom chips are ticularly video boards — direct access to a buffer controller for the expansion bus, the processor. At least one of the three a DMA controller and a memory slots is taken up by the necessary video System software management unit, but there are two board, or 'frame buffer' in Sun terminol- The operating system for the other commercial VLSI chips that have ogy; the basic graphics board takes up SPARCstation 1 is SunOS4, the same also helped to reduce the board size. one slot, while the accelerated GX ver- variant of Unix first seen on Sun's initial The NCR 53C90 SCSI controller chip sion takes up two. SPARC-based machine, the Sun 4, and (the same one as that used in the NeXT Interestingly, the slot nearest the the 80386-based 386i.

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As with the 386i implementation, the on the machine's internal speaker as it operating system comes fully loaded does on a Macintosh II. There was an and ready to go on the SPARCstation 1, overall feeling of solidity to the system — featuring Sun's new and excellent hyper- just as well, given the longevity of text help system as well as 'friendly' SunOS in all its variants. error and information messages that The rest is detail. The new 17in screen make getting started with Unix less of a is excellent; the 113-key keyboard has a pain than usual. good feel but the usual crowded Sun The usual collection of industry-stand- layout that makes mistyping inevitable; ard operating system components, in- the optical mouse is as good as such cluding the SunView graphical interface, things usually are, which is very good in- X.View, the Display PostScript-based deed. X.11/NeWS, and NFS and TCP/IP net- On the whole, though, it was hard to working, are all there. New additions are avoid the feeling that a 12.5 mips Open Look itself and a set of Open Look machine should have been more impres- applications called the Sun Desk Set. sive in the speed stakes. For those used These are utilities that perform file to single-user service from a 80386- management, electronic mail, text and based PC (or even a fast 80286-based icon editing, and performance measure- one) or a Macintosh II or IIx, the ment functions, as well as providing an SPARCstation 1 is nothing special. on-screen clock and a screen snapshot program. So far, the user interface to the operat- Prices ing system is the familiar SunView, al- The entry-level price for a SPARCstation though when System V Release 4.0 1 with 8Mbytes of RAM, a single finally appears in a few months this can 1.44Mbyte floppy drive, a standard 1152 be expected to move more towards by 900 video board and a 17in grey- Open Look. In any case, the Open Look- scale screen is $12,760, while a system based tools — particularly the file with two 104Mbyte hard disks and the manager — carry on the good work same video board driving a 16in 256 done initially by building an icon-based colour screen costs $19,800. With two file manager into SunOS on the Sun hard disks, a 19in colour screen and the 386i. GX graphics accelerator, the price goes up to $42,550. In use As ever in the workstation field, it has to Conclusion be said that the SPARCstation 1 was The SPARCstation 1 represents quite a something of a disappointment when it departure. After all, an entry-level RISC came to performance. It was certainly machine has been something of a con- slower in window handling and refresh- tradiction in terms in the past. But Sun ing than a theoretically much slower has produced a neat package with a lot Macintosh IIx, and any application that going for it, including around 500 required disk access also seemed slow SPARC-based applications already by the same comparison. available out of the 2000-odd applica- However, it must always be remem- tions produced for the Sun range overall. bered that a Unix system has a lot to do, Existing users of Sun 4 machines will and that the performance of an applica- find the SPARCstation 1 doing a similar tion tends not to change as extra ap- job at a much lower price, and will jump plications are loaded onto the system. at the machine; but those contemplating Moreover, in a typical system where a move into Unix from MS-DOS or the the workstation is networked to an array Macintosh may find the blind faith re- of similar or bigger machines, network quired to enter Sun's SPARC scenario, support always needs to be there in the even with a soon-to-be-standard operat- background; those other machines might ing system, rather too much. well steal some processing time from the The SPARCstation 1 is well thought- machine you are using if they need to. out, well designed, well built and ready That is what distributed processing is all for mass production. The masses, about, after all. though, may well find the Motorola- At review time it was not possible to based Sun 3/80 not only cheaper but spend a lot of time with the machine to safer in terms of available applications try out its applications, particularly the and the security of an installed base of new Open Look-based packages like something over 100,000 machines. As SunPaint, SunWrite and SunDraw. usual, now we find ourselves in the New However, the MS-DOS emulator worked World it is not clear what we ought to well in the limited tests we could per- make of it. form, the audio output sounded as tinny END

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