SGI beats HP to punch with Indy
BYLINE: Jean S. Bozman; CW Staff
SECTION: NEWS; workstation; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 266 words

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) last week revealed souped-up versions of
its six-month-old Indy workstation family, making its move just two
weeks before rival Hewlett-Packard Co. is expected to announce its own
low-end entries CW, Dec. 20.

Available in March, the new Indys were designed around 150-MHz MIPS
R4400 chips that reportedly boost performance by at least 50%.

The systems come with up to 64M bytes of memory and up to 1G byte of
disk and are priced at $ 15,495 CW, Dec. 27, 1993/Jan. 3, 1994.

The enhanced Indys fill out a low-cost line started in July with a $
4,995 diskless model that hosts multimedia applications. There are now
eight versions ranging in cost from $ 5,995 to $ 22,995.  Analysts
also said the Indy machines are the first in a wave of low-end units
expected from several vendors by March. The vendors are targeting the
low end of the workstation business, which overlaps with the high end
of the PC business, to gain more sales volume,'' said Dominic
Ricchetti, who directs workstation research at Dataquest, Inc. in San
Jose, Calif.

At least one early Indy user was pleased with the R4400 addition,
although upgrade kits will not be available for about six months, SGI
said. Osteonics Corp. in Allendale, N.J., recently purchased 28 Indy
workstations to handle three-dimensional design and manufacture of
medical implants, such as hip replacements. As packaged with
computer-aided design software, Osteonics' SGI systems were priced in
the midrange of all workstation systems evaluated, said Brian
Hutchison, the firm's vice president of finance.

SUBJECT: COMPUTER MAKERS (90%); PERSONAL COMPUTERS (90%); SURGICAL
APPLIANCE & SUPPLIES MFG (86%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (78%); COMPUTER
AIDED DESIGN (76%); ENGINEERING SOFTWARE (73%); SALES FIGURES (67%);
SURGERY & TRANSPLANTATION (65%); PROSTHETICS & ORTHOTICS (64%);

TICKER:  SGI (NASDAQ) (96%); HPQ (NYSE) (93%); 

INDUSTRY: NAICS334112 COMPUTER STORAGE DEVICE MANUFACTURING (96%);
NAICS334111 ELECTRONIC COMPUTER MANUFACTURING (96%); SIC3577 COMPUTER
PERIPHERAL EQUIPMENT, NEC (96%); SIC3571 ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS (96%);
NAICS334118 COMPUTER TERMINAL & OTHER COMPUTER PERIPHERAL EQUIPMENT
MANUFACTURING (93%); SIC8732 COMMERCIAL ECONOMIC, SOCIOLOGICAL, &
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH (68%);

PERSON:  ANN LIVERMORE (53%); 

COUNTRY:  UNITED STATES (52%); 

STATE:  CALIFORNIA, USA (52%); 

CITY:  SAN JOSE, CA, USA (52%); 

COMPANY: SILICON GRAPHICS INTERNATIONAL CORP (96%); HEWLETT-PACKARD CO
(93%); DATAQUEST INC (68%);

LOAD-DATE: January 26, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1994 Computerworld, Inc.