Good news from 8/26/97 Wall St Journal:
August 25, 1997
Intel Will Offer Demonstration
Of Greater Power for Servers
By MARK BOSLET
Dow Jones Newswires
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- The explosive and profitable server market is
attracting the attention of the computer industry's big guns and last week
was no exception, as industry headliners such as Compaq Computer Corp.,
Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. jockeyed to outdo each
other with new models boasting compelling features.
None of this was lost on microprocessor-market leader Intel Corp., which
is preparing several volleys of its own aimed at the server market.
Intel presently gets a "single-digit" percentage of its processor sales from the
server market. The company's Pentium Pro microprocessor is the brains of
many of these powerful computers, which function as software storehouses
on corporate networks.
But that sales percentage should grow to the "double digits in a few years,"
Intel Chief Executive Officer Andrew S. Grove said. Sales into the server
market are expanding two to three times as fast as sales into the
personal-computer market, he said.
On Monday, Mr. Grove will address an Orlando meeting of customers of
the German software company SAP AG, an opportunity he will use to
expound on Intel's view of the market. He will demonstrate an
eight-processor Pentium Pro server using the advanced computing
technique of symmetrical multiprocessing, a way of better harnessing the
joint power of the processors.
Intel and SAP America Inc., a unit of SAP AG, announced plans on August
5 for a jointly owned company that will offer hardware and software for
Internet commerce to small- and medium-size businesses.
The company, Pandesic LLC, will handle matters such as accounting and
logistics of sales over the Internet. Pandesic's system will rely on Intel
servers, or network-host computers, and a simplified version of SAP's R/3
business-management software, which has been widely adopted by large
corporations.
Intel expects multiple vendors will have eight-way systems on the market by
the end of the year -- offering customers an important step up from today's
four-way systems.
Monday's demonstration will be conducted on a computer from NCR
Corp. NCR had hoped to have its system completed by the end of last
year, but the milestone is nonetheless significant.
Many customers have been waiting for eight-way systems as a form of
investment protection, said Jay Bretzmann, an analyst at International Data
Corp. Customers want to know they can expand their servers as their
requirements grow, he said.
Mr. Grove also will announce a processing achievement. Using a large 160
Pentium Pro configuration and a UNIX operating systems, Sequent
Computer Systems Inc. was able to handle 2,800 users entering data
simultaneously.
Intel's interest in the market is obvious. The Santa Clara, Calif., company --
through its vendors -- has been amazingly successful at getting its
processors into corporate installations. International Data Corp. figures
show that the vast majority of low-end servers -- those costing $25,000
and less -- have Intel chips. That presence is expected to become even
more commanding by the year 2001.
Intel chips in systems from companies such as Sequent, NCR and Unisys
Corp. also have made a dent in a higher-priced market segment, machines
costing between $250,000 and $1 million. Growth here and in other price
categories is expected, according to the IDC figures.
In the 18 months or so since the introduction of its four-way processing,
Intel has changed the dynamics of the server market. Its comparatively
lower cost chips have pressured Unix vendors such as Sun, Mr. Bretzman
said.
Mr. Grove describes the four-way processing as a significant "inflection
point" and says his company intends to continue accelerating that pace of
change.
But the competition is not standing still. Sun last week introduced its
Enterprise 450, a lower-end product with a price of $14,650 that for the
first time is designed to work in Microsoft Corp.'s popular Windows
desktop environment.
Anil Gadre, vice president of corporate marketing, hopes the product line
will enable Sun to take market share in the $11 billion workgroup market
from companies such as Compaq, which sells Intel-based machines running
Windows NT.
The new Sun machine uses the company's chips and Solaris operating
system, which Mr. Gadre says is more powerful and capable than Windows
NT. But Mr. Grove is not sold. Windows NT is getting better and the next
generation of the software will have "great momentum ahead of it," he said.
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Copyright c 1997 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
August 26, 1997
Intel Ships Pentium II Chip Set
Enabling Advanced Graphics
By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel Corp. began shipping a chip set capable of
quadrupling the speed at which personal computers handle highly graphical
programs, such as video games and 3-D engineering drawings.
The so-called advanced graphical port set is part of Intel's
"visual-computing" initiative to broaden the market for PCs by making them
superior video-game players at the low end and rivals to powerful graphical
workstations at the high end. But PC users won't be able to take full
advantage of the chip set unless their machines use Intel's most advanced
Pentium II microprocessor and Microsoft Corp.'s next operating system,
Windows 98, which is expected to be shipped in the first quarter next year.
Intel's goal is relatively inexpensive PCs that make video and graphics as
realistic as a photo. The leader in graphical workstations, Silicon Graphics
Inc., based in Mountain View, Calif., is continuing to improve the
performance of its products, recently introducing a line of computers with
graphics-processing speeds as much as four times that of an advanced
graphic port machine.
Separately, Intel disclosed new products for another major initiative into the
network-gear market. It will start shipping on Sept. 30 routers with
software that can connect local computer networks at designated remote
sites, to form wide-area "virtual private networks." Intel said the software
will be provided to owners of Intel routers free of charge as an upgrade.
New routers equipped with the software will start at $1,299. Routers are
computers that direct traffic between networks. The huge network-gear
market, is dominated by Cisco Systems, based in San Jose, Calif.
Intel closed down $2, at $94.1875, in trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market
Monday.
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Copyright c 1997 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
