ENCHTEST NeXT The NeXT Computer System is very close to what designer promised three years ago, and he is confident that it will be the micro for the decade. Owen Linderholm says it's a breakthrough in price and power and may set an important standard.

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When Steve Jobs left Apple three years produced before; one of the reasons the monitor power, mouse, keyboard and ago and announced that he was going to final product is so cheap. sound signals. The monitor (only one is build the NeXT thing in computers, he The system software is based on the currently available) is black and hooks wasn't given much chance to succeed. multi-processing version of Unix. up to this with a 3m cable. It has a 17in But the NeXT Computer System is finally Display PostScript is used to display a display and shows 1120 by 832 pixels in here. It has long been known to be in- lightning-fast and very powerful graphi- four grey scales, giving it an on-screen tended as a Unix-based academic cal with windows, menus, resolution of 92dpi. It rests on an er- graphics . However, it took so icons and object-orientated features. gonomic stand, which is adjustable for long to arrive that several other com- It was designed in conjunction with an height and can tilt and swivel. The panies, notably Sun and Apollo, got well advisory board from US universities and stand's wheels allow it to be easily ahead in the field. colleges, and the collaboration shows in moved around on a desktop. The Out of the rumours, a few facts about much of the design. The digital signal monitor also has a small speaker. the NeXT computer surfaced. It would processor can be used for real-time data The keyboard connects to the base of use Display PostScript, a display version analysis, the 8Mbytes of RAM and the monitor and is also black, as is the of the image control language Post- 256Mbytes of disk storage provide mouse. Other connectors on the monitor Script, for screen output; it would have ample space for research work and include a stereo headphone jack, two especially good sound quality and con- volumes of data. The stereo connectors for hookup to external trol built in; the processor would be the is based on Berkeley Unix, the academic audio equipment and a microphone jack. ; and the operating sys- standard, and a huge range of valuable The keyboard has 84 keys, including tem would be loosely based around the research software is bundled with the cursor keys, a numeric keypad, a power Mach version of Unix. computer. on-and-off key (the only on/off switch for The real thing, much to everyone's the computer) and two keys to control surprise, has turned out to be very close volume and screen brightness. There to what Jobs promised all along. It in- Hardware are two Alt and two Command keys on cludes a coprocessor and a digital signal The computer is a matt, 30cm mag- either side of the main keyboard. The besides the 68030, all clocked at nesium cube. It has stylish industrial mouse plugs into the keyboard complet- 25MHz, giving it a processing speed of design ventilation grilles on all sides. ing a long daisy chain. It is a two-button five mips. The only other features on the cube are mouse, but the buttons are small and The most dramatic of its features is two panels on the front for mass storage awkwardly placed. the first erasable optical drive, storing a devices, one taken up by the optical NeXT's own laser printer is a 400dpi staggering 256Mbytes. The main circuit drive with a wide slot showing; the NeXT unit using a modified Canon SX engine. board is a masterpiece of design, is logo at the bottom; the universal power It is smaller than most current 300dpi very densely packed and uses surface supply connector at the back; and a laser printers and is designed to reduce mount techniques wherever possible. cluster of ports along the bottom at the paper jams. The printer also has a Even more amazingly, every single back. 300dpi mode, or 'draft' quality as Steve component apart from one is imple- There are seven ports at the back — Jobs described it. It has a universal mented in CMOS, meaning that it two are 8-pin serial ports. There is also a power supply and a paper feed operates more coolly and uses con- standard coaxial connector for Ethernet, mechanism that can automatically hand- siderably less power. a 9-pin serial port for connecting to the le different sized paper and envelopes. The board is made by an automated NeXT Laser Printer, a SCSI (pronounced Naturally, the printer is also matt black. assembly line and is untouched by `scuzzy) connector and a 15-pin D-con- It runs PostScript and has no external human hand from start to finish. The as- nector to send and receive digital data controls — everything is controlled from sembly line is able to produce boards from the chip. the NeXT Computer. It doesn't need an much more quickly and accurately than The final connector is a 19-pin D-con- expensive PostScript interpreter and boards this complex have been nector for the monitor, which carries the controller inside it since the computer al-

APC 100th Issue Page 39 BENCHTEST ready has the more advanced Display and the memory. Unfortunately, this isn't The ICP is optimised for these opera- PostScript. Instead, the computer does enough on a system designed for perfor- tions by including its own cache memory the imaging and the printer only has a mance on a network. There are too on-chip and by allowing it to make use of single VLSI custom chip inside. many I/O demands on the system; it burst modes in transferring data to and doesn't matter how fast the processor from main memory, as well as by allot- can run if it is constantly held up be- ting a memory buffer to each DMA chan- Inside the cube cause of competing access for memory nel. NeXT uses a 32-bit version of the NuBus and processor time from the network, The other custom VLSI chip is allotted architecture made popular by Apple in monitor, sound, printing, real time digital two DMA channels and it controls the the Mac II. The cube has four slots for signal processing and disk access. 256Mbyte optical disk, the SCSI connec- NuBus cards, with one holding the main The measure of performance that tor and the internal SCSI Winchester board. The board is extremely dense; it NeXT is using bases 75 per cent of sys- disk (if attached). This chip is known as is 30cm2 and holds all the circuitry to tem performance on data throughput the Optical Storage Processor and is re- control the computer and its peripherals. and 25 per cent on processor speed. quired because the optical drive is so The only non-CMOS component on this NeXT concentrated on system through- complex. The OSP includes error correc- board is a single array used for video put without compromising the basic tion code circuitry that ensures the data and Ethernet I/O. processor speed and claims an average on the optical disk is undamaged and it In the centre of the main board are the system throughput of 32Mbits per can correct read or write errors on the two custom VLSI chips that NeXT second, considerably better than com- fly. It operates its DMA channels simul- designed for the computer. These are parably priced or personal taneously — one is used for reading the largest chips on the board, and both computers, and not much worse than a data off the drive or writing to it, and the are twice the size of the main processor. typical mainframe at 50Mbits per other for transmitting data from the OSP One chip, the Integrated Channel second. to processor or memory. Processor, is responsible for much of the The solution to throughput in the In one corner of the main board is the performance of the computer; a concept mainframe world has been to add a system RAM — 8Mbytes in sixteen taken from the mainframe environment. separate processor for every I/O channel 10Ons SIMMs of 500k each. RAM can The main bottleneck for microprocessor- to manage the flow of data between the be expanded on board to a maximum of based computers has been access to device and memory. NeXT uses the ICP 16Mbytes. The board also holds an addi- memory, and most microcomputer chip for this, which has 12 DMA chan- tional port, a 50-pin SCSI for the optional manufacturers have solved the problem nels that can be used to move data be- internal hard drives. These are by providing disk caches and processor tween an I/O device and memory without 330Mbyte and 660Mbyte full-size 5.25in caches to speed access between these interrupting the main 68030 processor. drives made by Maxtor. The NeXT Workspace: menus always pop onto the top of win- The Webster dictionary and thesaurus and the complete dows; the file browser includes filename filters; and windows works of Shakespeare on the CD can be accessed by any can be shunted off-screen application running on the workstation

Also on the board is the main proces- early rumours, it was not manufactured laser is focused on the aluminum without sor, the 68030, clocked at 25MHz, and by Sony, but by Canon, which is not the magnetic field, which prevents the the 68882 numerical coprocessor renowned for its mass storage technol- alloy from melting or realigning incorrect- clocked at the same speed. An addi- ogy. ly. Depending on what state the portion tional coprocessor, the Motorola 56001 The disks used by the drives look of the alloy is in, a different amount of digital signal processor, is responsible similar to standard compact discs in light is reflected back and converted to a for much of the good, real-world perfor- stereo systems. They have a 5in signal, to be interpreted as 0 or 1. mance of NeXT. It was originally added diameter and are contained in a plastic Since the optical head can be fixed to the system for the digital sound syn- cartridge measuring 6in by 5.25in. The above the disk and uses a precise laser thesis and recording, because this re- casing is otherwise similar to that of a beam, the optical drive is inherently quires handling vast quantities of standard 3.5in disk. more reliable than a Winchester drive digitised information, but once it was Although larger than a 3.5in disk, the and a head crash is impossible. And with added, NeXT discovered it could be al- optical disk cartridge is probably more the perfection of this technique, it should located a large number of other tasks. robust, especially since it is less prone to be possible to create an optical drive The 56001 is a very advanced chip damage from contact than a normal flop- with better performance than a capable of processing its instructions at py disk. The disk surface has three Winchester. 10 mips, and is suited to performing layers — an aluminum surface, a sub- The drive has an access time of 96ms array processing on large quantities of strate of a rare earth/transition-metal but, since data can be read more or less digital information. The DSP is being alloy, and a plastic coating for protection. continuously using the OCP chip and buf- used for voice recognition software and The surface layers are translucent, so fering, the effective time can be improved. is under development at Carnegie-Mel- laser light can pass through and be At the launch, Steve Jobs claimed the ef- lon University. reflected back from the aluminum. fective transfer rate was comparable to The DSP is useful for analysing other The alloy layer is the key — it initially that of a medium-to-fast Winchester. kinds of externally gathered digital infor- has a random crystalline structure and In NeXT's mind, the optical disks are to mation, an obviously desirable trait for cannot be affected by a magnetic field be the floppy drives of the system — no an academic workstation, especially in when cool. To write information onto the other mass storage device is available scientific areas. disk, the laser is focused onto the alloy, except the fixed Winchester drives. NeXT also has 32k of 45ns static RAM heating it up to a point where it is af- for use as cache and buffers — 8k is for fected by the magnetic field. If a mag- the optical drive, allowing it to achieve a netic field is applied, the crystals are System software better performance, and the other 24k is aligned which gives the alloy layer dif- The software is even better than the used by the ICP for buffering. The video ferent optical properties, so that a dif- hardware. The basis for the system display has its own 256k of RAM, just ferent amount of light passes through it. software is the Mach operating system, enough to cope with the 232,960 bytes Two differing magnetic fields are used to a variety of Unix (and compatible with ,required by the display. Finally, a single produce two different alignments of the Unix 4.3 BSD) developed at the Univer- 128k ROM holds the startup code for crystals and these correspond to the two sity of California, Berkeley. Mach adds Unix — everything else is loaded off binary states 0 and 1. fast interprocess communication to the Ethernet or off the optical disk. The disk works by first writing the whole standard multi-tasking capabilities of area to be written to with the 0 orientation, Unix, allows shared memory use and which effectively erases it. Then a second adds threads. This theoretically allows Erasable optical drive pass writes 1s wherever required, and a NeXT to support multiple processors by This is probably the most important in- read operation verifies the data. giving separate threads to each proces- novation in the NeXT computer. Despite To read information off the disk, the sor, but in practice nothing has yet been

Page 44 APC 100th Issue BENCHTEST

done with threads. However, Mach does solve two big problems for programmers currently allow NeXT to support true writing for the computer. The first multi-tasking with full interprocess com- problem is the inherent complexity of munication, which means that multi-task- writing windowing interfaces for applica- ing applications can very easily share tion programs, which can often take over data and information. half the programming time for an ap- The NeXT operating system also sup- plication and sometimes as much as 90 ports TCP/IP (the Transmission Control per cent. The second problem is-the dif- Protocol/ Protocol) for com- ficulty of porting existing applications be- munication with remote systems, a tween different systems. On Unix sys- standard on Unix systems. NeXT has tems, the hard part has always been in licensed Sun's Network File System, converting the display and user interface and, since NeXT comes with Ethernet portions of the program. NeXT estimates hardware built in, it is ready for use on a that can reduce the standard Unix network. time to program the user interface to a On top of the basic operating system negligible amount, at most 10 per cent of there are several layers of system the time required for the application. software, which NeXT calls NextStep. The Interface Builder generates code One part is Display PostScript, which that can be integrated into a final ap- Adobe developed in conjunction with plication. 'All objects generated can be NeXT and which has several extensions customised — it is even possible to con- and improvements specifically tuned for tinue extending Interface Builder, adding graphics displays. Display PostScript is held inside the Window Server, and this performs the `NeXT is obviously a real same kinds of functions that X-Windows breakthrough in price and does on many other Unix systems. The Window Server handles all mouse ac- power. It may even be tions, interactions between windows and the next big personal menus, keyboard commands and so on. It deals with what it can, such as resizing computer and NeXT windows and passing on keystrokes. Anything else is passed on to the ap- thinks it will be the propriate application, which then informs computer for the 1990s.' the Window Server what to do. On top of the Window Server are other interconnected layers — the most impor- more objects, including application tant of which is the Application Kit. This programming objects that might allow a collection of 25 classes of object is used programmer to build a complete applica- for building application interfaces. The tion using only Interface Builder. This user interface is object-oriented, allowing would allow a user to create a program any text object, for example, to im- simply by selecting a bunch of program- mediately inherit a whole class of ming objects and linking them together properties related to text, such as fonts, — all done with the mouse, icons and sizes and text editing. windows! NeXT anticipates this will allow The interface objects provided by the anyone with programming experience to Application Kit are available to any create professional applications. program at a higher level, including The user interface objects are very NeXT's version of the 'desktop', the powerful. The basis of the interface is the Workspace Manager, and to application icon — these are detailed enough to programs. clearly show objects like a black hole (the The next level up is intended for use by NeXT equivalent of the trash can). Menus application programmers. It is essentially are fully hierarchical and pop-up, and they an application that programmers can use also stay popped-up until closed. Menus to build interfaces to their own applica- are all tear-off in that they can be tions. The program, Interface Builder, is separated from each other and moved in some ways reminiscent of HyperCard anywhere on the screen; windows are on the , but it is much more fully movable and sizable and have scroll flexible, giving windows, pop-up menus bars on the left and bottom, and there are and other controls to any application boxes on the frame for closing and resiz- program. These can then be hooked up ing. Like , windows graphically with other objects and ac- can be collapsed to an icon while the ap- tions provided by the application plication continues to run. programmer, letting the user build an in- The final part of NextStep is the terface by visually sticking it together. `desktop', called the Workspace NeXT has supplied Interface Builder as Manager. The basis for controlling the part of the system software in order to system here consists of two parts — in

A physics application being constructed. Many tools are avail- While molecular models spin in two windows, the Scope func- able to the programmer. Here, the user interface is being tion is analysing speech captured through the machine's built- designed in microphone general use, the most important is the The browser is the other main part of subwindows — the first is an iconic or icon dock, a fixed line-up of icons down the Workspace. This is a sophisticated test list of all the files and directories cur- the right-hand side of the screen cor- directory manager program and, while rently available. If an item is selected, a responding to the main menu on other directories are usually displayed as file subtree appears in the next window, and systems. If the full screen is required for icons in a window representing a direc- so on. It is also possible to select to any reason, the icons can be slid tory, files can also be looked at using the make visible only certain types of file, downward leaving the NeXT icon alone browser. This is a window that can be and these can be chosen on type, in. the bottom right corner. opened and which has at least three creator, date, size and so on. BENCHTEST

called SoundKit software bundled with the NeXT Com- and MusicKit, are puter — there is an electronic mail available for program compatible with Unix mail, but developers as part with a and of the application digitised sound for voice mail included; software. Used and Jot, a basic personal information with the DSP chip, manager for storing and retrieving notes, these allow the ideas, reminders, electronic mail, docu- programmer to ments, papers and any other text infor- write applications mation.

04 to uocaliapi.,i, to record, modify The bundled with the Itzartoellicmilepr mem. 164 and play back computer is WriteNow, a graphics and digitised sounds text word processor with a great deal of and music. power, re-designed specifically for NeXT. A full range of Mathematica, the analytical and calcula- programming tools tion-based mathematical program, is also is included such as included free and is capable of solving Objective-C 4.0 complex calculus problems or differential from Stepstone, an equations as well as performing algebraic object-oriented ver- manipulations and final calculations. In Electronic mail like you rarely see it. Each person on the mail sion of C used to addition, there are hooks into Mathe- directory can have an associated photograph. Notice the 'Black interact with the ob- matica enabling any external program to Hole' used as a trash can equivalent ject-oriented user use it, so application developers can use interface. There is its power in their own programs. Application software also a full GNU ANSI C compiler, a GNU Also included are the Sybase SQL C debugger with extensions for Objective- Database Server (so database applica- The application software bundled with C, GNU EMACS for program editing, the tions can be easily created) and the Al the NeXT Computer System is just as standard 4.3 BSD Unix utilities, a terminal language, Allegro CL Common Lisp. impressive as the system software and a emulator, a windowing text-editor and a big incentive to buy the computer. set of DSP tools for array processing. The most important section is the Digi- There is still a wide range of end-user Pricing tal Library, which allows users to store applications to come in the list of So what does it all cost? Even a conser- and access online versions of any text reference works, libraries of digitised graphic images and collections of digitised sounds. Included in the Digital Library is the Digital Librarian, an index- ing and searching tool to give users al- most instantaneous access to any tex- tual information. The speed of search over many megabytes of information is phenomenal. The Digital Librarian took one second to find five references to the word 'books' in the Oxford edition of Shakespeare's 'Complete Works'. Users can add to the Digital Library any textual, graphical or sound informa- tion they create or to which they have access. To get the average NeXT user started, the following reference works are included free: Webster's 'Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary' (complete text, in- cluding definitions, pronunciation, etymology and illustrations), Webster's `Collegiate Thesaurus', 'The Oxford Dic- tionary of Quotations', The OUP Edition of 'William Shakespeare: The Complete Works', all the NeXT technical and user documentation and other technical references. These are all accessible from within applications. For example, the bundled word processor, WriteNow, uses the dictionary as its spelling check- er: a double click on a word in the word processor brings up its definition from the dictionary. The complex design of the NeXT system unit owes a lot to the design of the mother- Two object-orientated sound tools, board

Page 50 APC 100th Issue BENCHTEST vative estimate would put the value of the bundled software at close to $US3000; add in 8Mbytes of RAM (about $US4000), the advanced hardware (say, another $US3000) and you get a minimum price of $US10,000. Incredibly, the complete NeXT Com- puter System will cost US universities only $US6500 with everything included, and the NeXT Laser Printer will cost only $US2000. Only US pricing is available, as details of Australian distributorship have not been finalised. Megavision and the Lionel Singer Corporation are both cur- rently negotiating for exclusive Australian rights to distribute the workstation.

Conclusion NeXT is obviously a real breakthrough in price and power. It may even be the next big personal computer and NeXT thinks it will be the computer for the 1990s. Steve Jobs believes personal computers have life-cycles of about 10 years; the first of these was the. Apple II line which is now almost finished; then came the IBM PC which, despite the clones, peaked technologically in 1986/87 and has another six years to go on a downward slope. Another 10-year cycle may occur with 80386 machines and OS/2, while the Apple Macintosh is due to peak technologically next year. NeXT believes it can take over the market as the Macintosh declines. There are, however, serious doubts about NeXT, such as how compatible it is in the real world with other existing Unix systems; how easy it will be to port ap- plications from other systems using dif- ferent complex windowing systems, in particular, X-Windows; whether NeXT can really deliver the machines in quantity at that price; the limited nature of the academic workstation market; the lack of any floppy drive; the difficulty of backing up the optical disks; and how quickly the main memory will be eaten up by the memory-hungry system and applications. NeXT can certainly sell every machine it makes in its first year to the US academic market, but what then? NeXT's investment in R&D and capital equipment, like its manufacturing plant, will take several years' sales to recover and maybe even longer at its current price. A year or so from now, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the NeXT com- puter is going on sale worldwide to anyone with the money — but I bet the price goes up for non-academics. Even at $US10,000, NeXT would be a killer. Until then, if you want one, enrol in a US university.