BENCHTEST SPARCstation 1 As the high-end PC world tends more and more to have the flavour of workstations, so workstation 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. Page 86 APC July 1989 BENCHTEST `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 Macintosh 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 Macintoshes. 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 (APIs) — 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/motif user interface built around DEC Windows and the Presentation Manager for X Window from Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. 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. APC July 1989 Page 87 BENCHTEST 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 .