ewlett-Packard will introduce on
July 14 a high-end workstation line designed for digital prototyping, the most sophisticated form of 3-D modeling. Besides seeding the workstation market with high-end graphics technology, HP hopes to use the product line to strike at a market segment dominated by the struggling Silicon Graphics Inc.
HP's system is based on the PixelFlow graphics acceleration architecture, which was developed at the University of North Carolina. HP acquired PixelFlow last year from Division Group plc in Bristol, England. The system runs HP-UX and is expected to cost several hundred thousand dollars. HP will reveal specifics, including the product's name and price, later this week.
Market research firm International Data Corp. defines high-end digital prototyping as a niche market, with estimated system shipments of only about 1,000 units in 1997. But analysts say HP has grander plans. "Introducing technology at the high end gives a company the opportunity to trickle down the technology into the mainstream market," sa
ys Keren Seymour, an IDC analyst in Mountain View, Calif.
A Silicon Graphics official says digital prototyping is growing, estimating that 20% of about 10,000 Onyx and Onyx2 workstations sold in the past few years are used for it. The Boeing Co., for example, designed its most-recent commercial jet, the 777, exclusively through virtual prototyping.
Drew Henry, Silicon Graphics' director of marketing for advanced graphics, claims that HP's new system is based on dated graphics technology that his company rejected when Division Group offered it for sale more than a year ago. "It's a 1991 architecture," says Henry, "and the market has evolved substantially since it was developed."
Still, with HP's entrance into the market, Silicon Graphics must face its first serious competition while trying to recover from a year of rocky financials. "SGI is the weak animal in the pack," says Peter Ffo
ulkes, an analyst with Dataquest Inc. in San Jose, Calif. "It's a good time for others to go after it."
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ewlett-Packard will introduce on
July 14 a high-end workstation line designed for digital prototyping, the most sophisticated form of 3-D modeling. Besides seeding the workstation market with high-end graphics technology, HP hopes to use the product line to strike at a market segment dominated by the struggling Silicon Graphics Inc.
