In terms of the RISC market, HP will soon be shipping their latest and greatest 64-bit processors. These chips significantly outperform every RISC chip on the planet. (over 40% faster then DEC's 400Mhz Alpha chips)
Systems slated for them were supposed to ship end of Q1. HP has pushed the date back a bit. Luckily systems exist, and have been in the hands of developers (Oracle, SAP, etc ...) for quite some time. CPU upgrades will be available for the modern systems for around $7,000/CPU. To give you an idea how fast they are, think of a 300mhZ pentium for integer-intensive apps, or a 800Mhz pentium for floating point (if they existed). And HP is doing this at only 180Mhz, imagine what they can do when they hit 400Mhz in a few years.
I have a pie chart from HP on their '95 revenue stream for their various technologies (printers, PCs, test/instruments, components, RISC systems ...) somewhere, I will try to dig it up and post a synopsis.
HP had lost their price/performance leadership to DEC's alpha. Now they will regain it. Furthermore, it will be at least a year before SUN & IBM can catch up with their new chips. This stock is a buy. Look for the new systems to lightly impact Q2 earnings, but have a strong one in Q3, provided HP doesn't run into delivery problems.
FYI - our firm resells HP RISC systems as well as IBM's, and IBM is running scared of them in the workstation market (in server market, IBM can hold its own). Look for this impact to put the hurt on SUN more than any other competetor. Sun just announced today big price reductions in possible anticipation of HP's announcement(s).
David |
