HP Shows New Generation of Minicomputers : First Major Updates of Models in 13 Years
Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday showed the first two models of a new generation of computers that is the foundation of the company’s strategy for the coming decade.
The two machines, powerful minicomputers aimed at the high-end business market, are the company’s first updates of its 13-year-old HP 3000 models. They are based on a new design, called reduced instruction set computing, or RISC, which allows a computer to work faster. RISC removes many complicated instructions, or functions, from the computer and relies on software programs when complexity is needed.
Although International Business Machines, the leading computer maker, has introduced engineering workstation computers that use RISC architecture, Hewlett-Packard has committed itself to using the design for all computer lines except its microcomputers.
Later Announcement
The company said it will announce later this year new engineering and manufacturing computer systems that also use the design, which it calls Precision Architecture. The new computers will be compatible with the earlier versions they are intended to replace. But more important, all computers using the new architecture will be compatible with one another--thus allowing a company’s manufacturing computers to talk easily with its computers in accounting.
The simplified design goes against the grain of computer development for the last several years, as increasing numbers and kinds of instructions have been built into computers. However, many analysts praise the uncomplicated RISC design for its versatility of applications as well as its fast manipulation of data.
“What we’ve done is simplified and streamlined computer design,” said Roy Verley, a Hewlett-Packard spokesman. “Through the years, computers got increasingly laden with things--like the tail fins of the ‘50s--and they were running out of gas. They were too heavy, too cumbersome. So we took a new look.”
Hewlett began the RISC project in 1981, and many analysts had expected the Palo Alto-based company to introduce the new computers long before now. Computers account for more than half of the $5.6 billion in annual sales of the company, which also makes scientific instruments.
Some analysts believe the delays will hurt the company’s ability to capture new sales, although it already has a well-established customer base. “They’re well designed but late in delivery,” said Laura Stewart of Yankee Group, a Boston-based securities firm. “But it is the next generation, and if the market can wait that long, Hewlett-Packard will have a good chance.”
Shipments of the first of the new machines, called the Series 930, won’t begin until the end of this year. The other, the Series 950, won’t be available until the second half of 1987. Digital Equipment Corp., the second-largest computer maker in the United States and a primary competitor of Hewlett-Packard’s in this market segment, already has begun shipments of its new, higher performance VAX system machines.
Says There’s Time
Skip Bushee, executive vice president at Infocorp, a Cupertino, Calif.-based market research firm, said that it was “not at all too late” and that, by taking the extra time to develop the new architecture, Hewlett-Packard could incorporate advantages that the others, who updated their business systems earlier, could not.
He cited the new architecture’s wide “scalability,” which means it can be used in very large or very small systems.
Prices of Hewlett-Packard’s new machines will be about half those of Digital’s comparable systems, said Verley, and will offer immense savings on energy consumption and service contracts.
