Digital Delivers Unified Unix O/S -- DEC OSF/1 for Alpha AXP

Announces new software and strategic alliances; extends cluster advantage to UNIX platform

UNIFORUM, SAN FRANCISCO -- March 17, 1993 -- Digital Equipment Corporation announced today at UniForum '93 that DEC OSF/1 V1.2, its 64-bit unified UNIX operating system for the Alpha AXP family of systems, is now shipping to customers. New system management and networking products, application development tools and desktop print servers for Digital's UNIX-based systems were also announced.

Digital is establishing partnerships with industry leading technology and product vendors to provide a complete, robust UNIX environment for commercial and technical applications. Many of these products will be available on DEC OSF/1 Alpha systems starting today.

"These announcements reinforce the commitment that Digital and its partners have made to provide a complete UNIX environment, capable of running applications originally designed for System V, BSD, and OSF/1 technologies. We are confident that no other UNIX vendor can match the quality, standards compliance, integration, high-availability, and performance of DEC OSF/1 on the Alpha AXP family of systems," said William R. Demmer, vice president of Digital's Computer Systems Group.

A summary of performance measurements for the DEC OSF/1 operating system, utilizing industry-standard benchmarks, was also provided by Digital. Benchmark results include CPU-intensive, single stream performance measures, such as SPECint92 ratings which start at 74.8 for the DEC 3000 Model 400 entry-level system and range up to 116.5 for the single processor DEC 10000 Model 610 system. Multiuser benchmarks, such as the AIM performance rating, which measure system performance under an increasing workload are also provided, with the DEC 3000 Model 500S achieving a price/performance leadership AIM rating of 82.9.

DEC OSF/1 V1.2 also sets a new realtime performance standard for a general purpose operating system by offering a level of realtime response that was previously only available from specialized vendors of expensive, high performance, realtime UNIX systems.

Digital also described its future directions for providing cluster technology on its UNIX platform.

"Digital introduced cluster technology to the industry and is implementing a phased approach to deliver its leadership cluster functionality on the UNIX platform. Delivering UNIX clusters will be achieved by combining Digital's expertise with technology from industry-leading vendors. UNIX cluster functionality will enhance customers' investments by providing the advantages of hardware fault resilience, automated fast recovery, expandability and resource sharing across the enterprise," Demmer said.

New Software Products for DEC OSF/1 V1.2

New software product announcements from Digital include the POLYCENTER Advanced File System and POLYCENTER Advanced File System Utilities to meet the needs of DEC OSF/1 operating system users who require high availability in large scale commercial or technical storage system environments. Featuring fast reboot, data integrity protection and enhanced file system performance, POLYCENTER Advanced File System is licensed with DEC OSF/1 V1.2 and can be ordered now for shipment in May, 1993.

POLYCENTER Advanced File System Utilities, a layered software product for the DEC OSF/1 operating system, provides greater availability, multi-disk support and performance tuning. This software can be ordered now for shipment in May, 1993, with prices from $1,800 to $20,400, depending on system and processor size.

In addition, Digital's software development tools for the DEC OSF/1 operating system are also shipping. These include DEC C++ V1.2, a complete C++ development environment, and DEC FUSE software, an integrated suite of programming tools based oncommon UNIX commands and utilities.

Digital's dynamic application integration software, DEC ACA (Application Control Architecture) Services, will be available on the DEC OSF/1 operating system in July, 1993. ACA Services is Digital's multivendor Object Request Broker - software that today runs on eight operating environments including systems from H-P, IBM, Apple, Sun and Microsoft. Users of ACA Services can save time and resources through the rapid integration of new and existing applications, facilitating process re-engineering efforts. Digital was the first to deliver a commercial implementation of this technology, as specified by the Object Management Group, on both Digital and non-Digital systems.

The DEC FDDIcontroller/TURBOchannel network interface card supporting FDDI connectivity for DEC 3000 AXP TURBOchannel-based workstations is also now available. Now, DEC OSF/1 operating system users have network choices that include Ethernet and FDDI connectivity,TCP/IP and DECnet/OSI protocol support, and X.25 support for wide area networking. Digital has committed to deliver Token Ring connectivity and Pathworks support in the near future.

Digital Equipment Corporation, headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts, is the leading worldwide supplier of networked computer systems, software and services. Digital pioneered and leads the industry in interactive, distributed and multivendor computing. Digital and its business partners deliver the power to use the best integrated solutions - from desktop to data center - in open information environments.

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Note to Editors: DEC ACA Services,Alpha AXP, AXP, DEC, DEC C++, DEC FUSE, DEC OSF/1, Digital, the Digital logo, POLYCENTER, Pathworks, StorageServer 100, and ULTRIX are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation.

HP is a registered trademark of Hewlett-Packard Company.

IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.

SUN is a registered trademark of SUN Microsystems, Inc.

OSF and OSF/1 are registered trademarks of the OPen Software Foundation.

UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.

Editorial contact:

Brian Duggleby
UNIX Product Marketing
(603) 881-1216