Big Tech Firms to Join Forces on New Type of PC : Computers: The consortium of big names in the industry will propose a faster model with state-of-the-art graphics and networking capability to challenge IBM and Sun.
Some of the biggest names in the computer industry will join forces Tuesday to propose a new type of personal computer, a high-powered machine that could eventually stem the proliferation of the 10-year-old International Business Machines-compatible standard and slow the spectacular growth of Sun Microsystems.
The consortium, led by Compaq Computer, Digital Equipment, Silicon Graphics, Microsoft and the Santa Cruz Operation, will support the development of desktop computers that combine new chips and new software to provide speedy operation, state-of-the-art graphics and networking capabilities, and the ability to perform several tasks at once.
“Any time that many companies get together, there’s the potential for something big,” said Richard Shaffer, principal of Technologic Partners in New York. “They could create a new computing industry standard, though a standard itself doesn’t mean much. The question is whether they will really stick together and do something.”
The effort to establish a new PC design standard reflects the increasing importance of desktop computers, which are taking on many tasks once reserved for big mainframe systems and mid-size minicomputers.
More personal computers are being tied together with networks to allow them to share resources. Top-of-the-line PCs, and the more powerful engineering workstations built by Sun and other companies, serve as “hosts” for groups of desktop machines. The combination often provides more power and greater flexibility than centralized systems costing millions of dollars.
But the personal computers known as IBM-compatible, which rely on a microprocessor--or computer-on-a-chip--from Intel and a software operating system from Microsoft, are straining to keep up with this work load. Microsoft’s DOS operating system was not designed for these new uses, and Intel’s family of microprocessors--though growing steadily more powerful--is being surpassed by chips using a new design called reduced instruction set computing (RISC).
That has opened the door for Sun, the leader in the market for powerful workstations used by engineers and scientists for product design and simulations. Sun’s machines, based on RISC microprocessors and a powerful, multi-user software operating system called Unix, have been making major inroads into the commercial computing arena, especially in the financial services industry.
Compaq, Microsoft and other players in the personal computer industry have thus been searching for ways to stem the intrusion of Sun into what they consider their turf. At the same time, they hope to further their control over the direction of personal computers at the expense of IBM.
The result is the consortium, which many analysts liken to the Compaq-led EISA consortium that succeeded in creating a non-IBM standard for the design of a key PC subsystem.
None of the companies will discuss details before Tuesday’s announcement. But the group is widely expected to lay out plans for a computer standard based on a RISC microprocessor from Mips Computer Systems, a Silicon Valley start-up company, and graphics hardware and software from Silicon Graphics.
Santa Cruz Operation, which markets a Unix software system for Intel-based PCs, would develop a new version of Unix for the Mips chip. And Microsoft, which is developing a new, high-performance operating system that will run on several different types of hardware, would commit to implementing that system on the Mips chip.
Different companies in the group would develop and market different configurations of the machine, and some, such as Digital Equipment, might implement their own versions of the Unix software. Rikki Kirzner, a senior analyst at Dataquest, said the group would also announce support for an Intel-based machine that would use the new software from Microsoft and Santa Cruz Operation.
A broad set of standards, though, will allow independent software companies to develop the specific applications packages that will make the new systems useful.
Most analysts don’t expect products based on the consortium’s standards to be available for about 18 months, and thus it is too early to tell how big an impact the new alliance will ultimately have on a rapidly changing market.
“I think this is a real attempt to develop a next-generation machine,” said Malcolm L. Davies, senior vice president at Autodesk, a software company whose computer-aided design package could be an important application for the new computer. “But we need real machines before we can do anything.”
