Compaq eyes CAD with new workstations

Compaq continued to pile the pressure on traditional RISC machine vendors today with the release of its Professional Workstation 6000 and 8000 lines. While the world's number one PC vendor has made great strides in the financial sector, even it admits that the CAD sector has been beyond its grasp and hopes to correct that failing with the new ranges.

The 6000 (from £3,535) supports up to two 266MHz or future 300MHz Pentium II processors with 512Kb cache RAM and 512Mb RAM. The 8000 (from £8,625) supports up to four 200MHz Pentium Pro chips with 512Kb cache and 3Gb RAM.

Compaq says its dual memory bus Highly Parallel System Architecture speeds performance by processing instructions to peripherals in parallel. The workstations are offered with choice of Matrix Millennium II, ELSA Gloria-L and Diamond Fire GL 4000 graphics controllers, and ship in mnini-tower chassis with Wide-Ultra SCSI, 100Mbps LAN card and 16-speed CD-ROM drive.

"We're not going to replace Sun," said Hugh Jenkins, Compaq UK group marketing manager for systems. "We're in the business of providing for the needs of the many, and doing it well. Comparing Sun to Compaq is like comparing a delicatessen to a supermarket but] sure, there could be a delicatessen in a supermarket. This year we're going to focus and make sure we've made the in-roads into CAD. Were not ready to take on companies like Silicon Graphics in high-end niche graphics markets."

Compaq can be contacted by telephone on 0990-134456.