IBM NCR 3330

A Powerful Desktop

NCR has enhanced its AT bus product line with the addition of the NCR 3330, a powerful desktop computer that delivers superior upgradability. The NCR 3330, based on industry standard AT-but architecture and Intel486 microprocessor technology, contains two processor sockets and is upgradable through the entire i486 family. Upgrading a DX-based system with a DX2 processor can be done by simply replacing a chip; the math coprocessor is already integrated on the chip. Upgrading an SX-based system with an Overdrive processor can be done by simply adding a chip.

The NCR 3330 supports MS-DOS, Windows, SCO-UNIX, OS/2 and Novell NetWare operating environments. The 3330 is available with a minimum of 4 MB memory. The 16-bit, Advanced VGA video subsystem supports 1024 x 768 resolution with 256 colors. Other standard features include three internal half-height disk drive positions, four full-size 16-bit AT epan-sion slots and password security. Some optional features include the choice of 80, 120, 160 or 240 MB fixed disk drives and a connector for an external flex disk or tape drive.

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Power (Performance optimization with enhanced RISC) PC is the hardware component of IBM and Apple’s plan for network operability between OS/2, IBM AIX and the Apple Macintosh. PowerPC is anticipated to create a profound transformation in the way PC are used. Initial use of PowerPC-based systems is expected to be in embedded control for automotive and consumer products use, portable and desktop computers high-end fault tolerant systems, and supercomputers.

Motorola will aid in designing, manufacturing and marketing the technology, which will be available to other manufacturers besides IBM and Apple. The three companies have decided to base PowerPC on the IBM architecture because of its capabilities and the size of the installed base.

The architecture specification have been completed, development of microprocessor has already started and the first systems are expected to be available next year. It seems the day is not far off when the same program can be run on different brands of computers easily.

IBM and Apple Computer Inc’s first PowerPC-based system will be priced under US$2,000 to compete with 386SX machines, officials from both companies and Motorola Inc revealed.

The system, a low-end desktop expected as soon as early 1993, will offer about 20 SPECmarks in performance, said officials from the three com-paines, speaking at the fourth annual Microprocessor Forum here.

“We expect the first products to compete with the 386SX-lcvcl products — offering those price points but much better performance,” said Eric Harslcm, vice-president of Apple’s desktop product division.

The current road map calls for the PowerPC—a single-chip implementation of IBM’s RS/6000 CPU— to be ready “in the second half of 1992,” said Lcs Crudele, general manager of Motorola’s RISC microprocessor division, which is working on the chips with IBM.

By 1993, PowerPCs will be available for portable and “mainstream” PCs, Crudclc said. These chips will offer performance of about 20 and 70 SPECmarks, respectively. In 1994, PowerPCs will be available for high-end workstaions and servers, offering up to 200 SPECmarks of performance.

By comparison, Sun Microsystems Inc’s $15,495 40MFL SPARCslation 2 processes 24.7 SPECmarks.

In addition to unveiling details of the PowerPC, Phil Hester, vice-president of IBM’s Advanced Workstaion Division, said the group is considering Porting its PowcrOpcn environment to the Intel platform. Hester also said the group next year will build a reference design to enable other firms to design PowerPC-based systems.

“This is not a three-person club,” he said. “We fully expect to have other manufacturers participating by early next year.”

Forum attendees were surprised at the level of redesign that the group is planning. “It’s clear that PowerPC is designed to do more than just fill out IBM’s current RS/6000 line — it’s a whole new platform,” said George White, president of Corollary Inc, a multiprocessing design firm.

Other announcements at the Microprocessor Forum included the following:

* Officials from Texas Instruments Inc confirmed thai the firm’s “Viking” Super -SPARC processor has been delivered to Sun. The new chip will deliver ” up to three times the perform anccof SPARCstation 2,” they said.

*   Motorola unveiled its new 88110 Symmetric  Superscalar  RISC  chip  for workstations and high-end peripherals. It supports 3-D color graphics and two levels of cache.

*   Advanced Micro Devices Inc announced the 29200, a single-chip processor for laser printers designed to compete with Intel Corp’s i960 processor. It processes 7 mips. Samples arc due in the first quarter, said officials. ?             . Vancc McCarthy

IBM is busy building Arabic solutions into OS/2. It has developed an Arabic Toolkit for OS/2 Presentation Manager that provides Arabic services on both the user and the programmer level. With the help of Arabic Toolkit, Arabic users will be able to enter, edit and display bilingual text through an intuitive user interface. The toolkit also provides several Arabic fonts. For developers, the Arabic Toolkit provides a programming interface that allows them to develop Arabic applications under the Presentation Manager. The company is working also on integrating images, the Database Manager and Arabic on the OS. By using the graphics capabilities of Presentation Manager along with the Arabic Toolkit with the database, an Arabic image database can be created.

ALR’s Powerpro/MC systems are being launched in direct competition to IBM’s PS/2 Model 95 system. The Powerpro/MC system microprocessor is upgradeable. Unlike the IBM PS/2 Model 95 system, the Powerpro/MC is designed to be dual processor– ready to satisfy future high performance computing requirements,” said Gregory Hauw, vice president of ALR Asia Pacific Operations.

The systems are based on a 50 or 33 MHz i486DX CPU and 32 bit Micro Channel bus. They incorporate 17 Mbytes of RAM expandable to 49 Mbytes on the system board. They provide a future upgrade path to accommodate dual 33 MHz or 50 MHz i486DX microprocessors. These IBM PS/2 compatible systems offer an industry standard platform capable or supporting off-the-shelf SCO Unix applications and Novell Netware. “At an aggressive price….the Powerpro/ MC is the world’s first Micro Channel personal computer to have dual processing capabilities,” said Hauw.

“ALR continues to offer price/performance without sacrificing cutting edge technology as indicated by the growing success of ALR’s Micro Channel based computers,” he added.

When the drab regulatory impediments and incongruous brucratic decesions are hindering the all-round faster growth of Computer Industry in Bangladesh, in that sad era of prolonged computer infancy here arrived an accomplished Napalcse computer entrepreneur to sell his banking software product — Pumori.

Though it is heart wrenching for us, we still welcome the Ncpalese banking babe with a broad hope that this latest Napalese invesion shall wake us up and our toddling computer industry shall stand on two good feel to start a glorious run (not walk) in the global computer village sooner.

Named after a mount of Himalayan Range, Pumori is a on-line Multiuser Banking System Software featuring audit trial, dynamic menu, multilateral security, better customer statement, phone enquiry and external computer hookup.

The CEO of Nepal’s Mercantile Office Systems Mr. Sanjib Raj Bhandari introduced the Pumori System to bankers, entrepreneurs and business executives in a daylong seminar jointly organised by Mercantile Office System and their local partners NSS and IBM. To impart acom-prehensive knowledge of its operation Mr. Sanjib practically demonstrated the system and claimed that Pumori is flexible, easily manageable and secured.

Speaking in the seminar the other Napalese software elite Mr Prakash Bajra-charya of Mercantile Office Systems said that the bankers could keep account of the whole banking system through Pumori and the system has special transaction security and transaction tracking system needed for branch banking.

In an exclusive interview with Computer Jagat Mr. Sanjib said that his company is dealing banking system since 1985. It was KAPITI, a largebank-ing software from England. They sold only a few KAPITI in Nepal. They decided to develop their own banking system and with 70 man-years of effort they delivered their own baby – Pumori in 1988.

Sanjib’s company is also authorized reseller of Novell Netware in Nepal. I Ic announced the birth of Pumori in thj 1990 Australia-Asian regional conlei-ence of Novell in Hong Kong. Puinon was formally launched in Nepal in 199 ]. Mr. Sanjib said that Pumori is baM-cally equipped to handle very large volume of banking transactions. In Nepal a Pumori costs USS 50,000 to S 80,000 and they have so far installed 7 systems. For rural and small banks with low volume of transactions they have another version called Pumori Lite, which is relatively cheaper.

Mr. Sanjib hinted that selecting correct people is the key in successfully marketing a computer software. He always looks for key people having expar-tise in banking and computer before he launch his

product in any country. He said—”it is vital because it is the local partner who will support locally, not me.” In Bangladesh his all important local partners are NSS and IBM. The LAN will be provided by ACT the Bangladeshi reseller of Novell.

Mr. Sanjib is talking with 2/3 people to launch Pumori in India. Pakistan’s Habib Bank is one of his joint-venture partners in Nepal and he is expecting to launch Pumori in Pakistan through them. He has already found partners in Malaysia and Indonesia and shall participate in bid there.

He informed that in Nepal there is no university degree on computer science so far. One will start next year with two years college level degree. In the capital Katmandu there are lot of computer activities in the school level. ‘Almost all sorts of schools in the capital have computer’, he said.

Mr. Sanjib also informed that at present Nepal have about 60 hardware and less than a dozen software cxparts, most of whom studied computer overseas. ‘Many Napalese companies are using computer these days’, he said.

Mr. Sanjib who did his schooling in Katmandu’s American School, graduated from Bombay in Management and Accounting. After finishing higher studies on Computer and System Analysis in the UK he Stepped-in in his family business of office equipment in 1983. In 1985 he expanded the Mercantile group’s empire, which was established far back in 1949, by floating Mercantile Office Systems.

An well informed Mr. Sanjib said- ‘Inspitc of resource constraints the banking sector of SAARC region is going through a rapid reform and we want to contribute something positive with IBM’. He continued – ‘We are in touch with IBM since 1985.’

Mercantile have around 20 other financial and commercial application software products for local use. These are General Ledger, Payroll, Accounts Receivables and Payables etc. They are talking with NSS for marketing of these products in Bangladesh.

Mr. Sanjib said that the World Bank’s appointed accounting firm Booz Allen and Hamilton is now working in Bangladesh on computerization of local banks. Based on their recommendations the entire spectrum of banking sector will undergo a lot of changes. Booz Allen have already reviewed Pumori System in Nepal, where they worked before, under similar World Bank contract.

Mr. Sanjib mentioned that though Pumori has some advantages which are lacking in other banking software already introduced in Bangladesh and though the program is fairly big to give wide range of dependable services, nevertheless it will face competition for its price. ‘The only worry is that it may be costly’, he said.

‘For successful induction, of the system Mercantile will train people from NSS and ACT in Dhaka and Nepal concluded a personable Sanjib.

A/.am Muhumood

New York, June 1— IBM recently outlined a broad-based future product plan that both impressed analysts and left them skeptical. IBM’s scope pleased analysts, but its vision of a radically different computing paradigm raised questions as to how it would happen.

IBM executives outlined a two-year product cycle that on the hardware side ranged from a family of handheld devices to high-end “video” file servers that handle multimedia applications over a wide-area network.

“Many people won’t recognize it is a computer they’re buying,” James A. Cannavino, general manager of the IBM Personal Systems Division, said of some of IBM’s upcoming systems.

Though Cannavino and the other executives offered few specifics, handheld personal computers could in fact seem more like consumer electronics products. Cannavino also pointed to a broad range of hardware and software alliances that will create new types of products. Cannavino said IBM envisions technology being used in such a way as to “in some cases… make obsolete the way we’ve done things before.”

He pointed to reduced travel needs through the use of videoconferencing tools, for instance, and advances in portable computing and communications that might allow companies to move away from the traditional office environment entirely.

He said the company invested heavily in licensing new technologies and saw communications devices and object-oriented software as key initiatives.

IBM will also push to develop new server environments that can handle much more data than today’s can. The company said it sees Notes servers, – dedicated to handling communications run over Lotus Development Corp.’s Notes package, that will allow users to build local area networks around so-called flat databases with easy access to unstructured data.

This could make for an environment where a user would be able to enter a name and receive a list of all documents in the database where that name occurs and the context in which it is used, for instance.

These types of systems will be followed to market by vastly, more powerful video servers, which will nave full multimedia (data and motion video) capabilities and will connect wide-area networks.

IBM will also push infrared and cellular, or radio-frequency, communications as a way to transmit data as well as video, prompting some analysts to say it is trying to circumvent telephone companies.

Cannavino said IBM‘s server vision might culminate in a “personal” server. This might be the size of a common stereo component and yet be powerful enough to run motion video applications easily; it could also be mobile.

IBM also intends to build, or perhaps license, handheld personal digital assistants. Motorola, Inc. was cited as a business partner in this effort, which could produce a pen-based system that would be held in one hand and allow users to keep in contact with their offices.

Cannavino said IBM sees communications speed and capabilities increasing as fast, or faster, than the rate of microprocessor development. Microprocessors double in speed roughly every 18 months.

“There’s a paradigm shift coming in communications.” he said. unqualified in their praise.

“They have lots of good ideas,” said Dan Ness Jr., an analyst at Computer Intelligence in La Jolla, Calif. “The question is, how they Analysts pointed out that IBM would likely have company in its efforts, with some partners, such as Apple Computer, Inc., proving fierce competitors. Analysts said IBM had presented impressive ideas, although few observers were market them?”

Some analysts who attended the briefing expressed skepticism over IBM’s plans. “They want us to be in hydro boats, but they’re giving us rowboats right now,” said Gerald Michalski, vice president at New Science Associate Inc., a consultancy in Southport, Conn. At the same time, Michalski added that he liked many of the elements of IBM’s PC strategy and said, “I don’t see anyone else going front to back like IBM.”

Several products likely to appear before the end of 1992 are a 1.7-in. hard drive that can hold 40M bytes of data and a Token Ring network adapter that is roughly the size of a credit cad. Both devices are compatible with the flash card standard established by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association. A clock-doubler version of its 20-MHz I486SLC chip was also on display.

Robert Carberry, assistant general manager of IBM’s Entry Systems Division, said a voice-recognition project called Tangora is also nearing the market. He also said the 80M bit/sec. Micro Channel Architecture recently announced on the RISC System/6000 will appear in Personal System/2s in the future.

Looking ahead

IBM’s Personal Systems Division’s strategy for the next 18 to 24 months is as follows:

Servers :

* Lotus Notes-specific application server to act as a “flat” database.

*    Video server—designed with improved bandwidth and compression to run multimedia applications— will run data and video over telephone lines or through infrared and RF connections. (These video servers may fall into a category IBM calls “personal” servers, the size of a stereo component, which individuals will be able to use.)

*    Tangora voice recognition product, designed for use with PCs.

Portables :

*    A family of handheld Personal Digital Assistants that communicate through wireless technology.

*     PCMCIA-compatible Token Ring adapter card.

*     PCMCIA-compatible 1.8-in., 40M-byte hard drive.

— Michael Fitzgerald

IBM has made a welcome return to profitability following one of the most traumatic years in its history. The company reported 1st quarter net profits of $595million against losses of $1.7billion last time, on turnover up 3.3%at$14billion. John Akers, IBM chairman said, “Although worldwide economic conditions remain unpredictable, we are encouraged by our improved performance, particularly in the U.S and by the progress we are making in streamlining the company. IBM collapsed into the red last year, reporting a $ 2.8 billion loss for the 12 months. The losses included charges of $ 5.7 billion to cover thousands of layoffs and charges to retirement benifits in the US.

Despite the improved performance, hardware sales were poor, slipping 2.7% to $ 7.1 billion in the quarter. However, maintenance and service revenues grew by 36% to $ 1.3 billion and 19% to $ 1.2 billion respectively. ‘Overall, we are pleased with these results and we are on track.’ said Akers.

The new POWER station/ POWERserver models range from a desktop system priced at less than $7,000 to a new highend deskside model for which IBM claims industry-leading performance. The POWERstation/POWERserver 220 desktop system uses IBM’s first single chip RISC processor, running at 33 MHz. The lowest-priced RS/6000 model to date, is aimed at jobs such as technical publishing, application development, electronic design, and stock trading, IBM said. It uses IBM’s new Power entry graphics adapter, which supports monochrome, grayscale, or colour displays and has built in Ethernet and Small Systems Interface adapters.

Prices  for  the POWERstation/ POWERserver 220 range from $6,345 for an entry-level unit with no hard disk and 16 MB of memory, to $9,995 for a workstation version with a 400 MB hard disk drive. A 220 server version with a 400 MB hard disk drive costs $9,715.

While the POWERstation configurations come with a graphics adapter and display, the POWERserver versions come without these features but with a quarter-inch tape drive. The POWERstation/POWERserver 340 and 350 systems also come as desktop units. The 340 models have a 33 MHz processor, while the 350 machines use a 42 MHz version and are well suited to researchers and designers, small businesses, and departments in larger organizations.

The POWERstation/POWERserver 340 with 16 MB of memory and 160 MB of disk storage costs $18,895 and $18,790 respectively.

The new flagship of the RS/6000 line is the POWERstation/ POWERserver 560, which has a 50 MHz IBM RISC processor. The new deskside model can deliver performance of 89.3 SPECmarks or 30.4 Mflops. The price for the base model with 64 MB of memory and an 800 MB hard disk drive is $64,110 for the workstation or $62,240 for the server configuration.

The POWERstation/POWERserver 520H that is described as an enhanced entry-level deskside system, provides about 25 per cent better performance than the existing 520 model. With a 25 MHz processor, a 16 MB memory and a 400 MB hard drive, the 520H costs $28,110 as a workstation or $26,240 as a server.

IBM has intoduced several new software products that include a new version of its Unix based operating system, AIX 3.2 for the RS/6000 line, the first production-level operating system to fully comply with the Open Software Foundation’s (OSF) Application  Environment Specification. The AIX Software Development Environment (SDE) that uses Hewlett-Packard’s Softbench technology is the centerpiece of IBM’s computer-aided software engineering (CASE) offering for the RS/6000. The AIX SDE Integrator/6000 lets customers integrate their Unix CASE tools into the framework that provides compatibility with software development tools for Unix from other vendors.

Anew rcleaseof aPC simulator that lets the RS/6000 run DOS applications; and NetWare for AIX/6000 from IBM Version 3.11, which brings the popular Novell network operating system to IBM’s Unix product line are some of the other recently introduced software products by the company.