Compaq unveils EV6 DS10 family

Today Compaq is expected to introduce its DS10, 466MHz EV6 machine in a further bid to capture market share at the expense of Intel. According to industry analyst Terry Shannon who edits Shannon knows Compaq, the product is a replacement for the Alpha Server 800. It comes in a desktop box, and includes 2Mb of level two cache, a 300W power supply, four PCI slots, dual 10/100 Ethernet ports, CD, floppy and will support up to three hard drives. The box uses a cut down version of the Tsnunami chipset in the DS20, says Shannon. Preliminary benchmarks indicate 24 SPECint95 and 45 SPECfp95. It will be available for Linux, NT, Open VMS and Compaq’s own Tru64 Unix. K7 watchers, who are legion, are likely to inspect the performance and pricing of the box closely for clues to how AMD’s new processor will work out. A Linux version with a 10Gb hard drive and 64Mb of memory is likely to cost around $3,500, says Shannon. ®