DIGITAL ANNOUNCES BREAKTHROUGH WINDOWS NT PERSONAL WORKSTATIONS WITH
WORKSTATION-CLASS 3D GRAPHICS, AND ADVANCED UNIX AND WINDOWS NT
INTEROPERABILITY

MAYNARD, Mass., April 29, 1996 -- Digital Equipment Corporation today
accelerated its campaign to dominate the market for Windows NT personal
workstations with the announcement of two new systems -- the Alpha XL 300
and 366. The new personal workstations are powered by Digital's most
advanced microprocessor technology -- the Alpha 21164 -- and they offer
levels of performance for technical applications that exceed the fastest
UNIX workstations from Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, Inc. For its
entire line of XL personal workstations, Digital is also announcing its
PowerStorm graphics adapters and bundled software for UNIX integration,
internet connectivity, and 3D visualization.

Digital's XL family of personal workstations -- the industry's only Windows
NT workstations to support both Intel and RISC microprocessors -- offer
customers a significant competitive advantage by bringing the benefits of
personal computing to high-performance workstation environments. Those
benefits include low cost and adherence to PC standards for access to PC
commodity peripherals and productivity tools.

"Windows NT systems have dramatically lowered the cost of traditional
workstation computing," said Philippe Ribeyre, vice president of Digital's
Workstation Business Segment. "By offering unprecedented levels of CPU and
graphics performance at a fraction of the price of traditional UNIX
workstations from other vendors, Digital is leading the Windows NT
revolution for technical computing on the desktop. With today's
announcement, Digital is uniquely positioned as the only company to offer
advanced systems and graphics for UNIX and Windows NT operating systems --
with Windows NT for Alpha and Intel -- and the software tools and service
for both environments."

In an independent CADalyst benchmark test based on AutoCAD R13c4, Alpha XL
and Celebris XL 6200 personal workstations outperformed a Sun Ultra 1/170
-- Sun's fastest workstation. A Pro/ENGINEER benchmark test showed an
Alpha XL 366 beating an HP C110 by 100 percent, a Sun 170/E by 113
percent, and a Silicon Graphics, Inc.'s Indigo 2/200 by 211 percent.

The Ideal Personal Workstation for Technical Users

The XL family of personal workstations offer a choice of Intel, Pentium,
Pentium Pro, and Alpha processors in a desktop enclosure. Customers can
choose systems that best meet their needs. The Intel-based Celebris XL
family offers a lower price point and outstanding price/performance for
entry-level and mid-range technical computing. Alpha XL systems offer the
industry's highest levels of performance for floating-point applications
such as 3D solids and photorealistic rendering, for example. Customers can
upgrade from a Celebris XL to an Alpha XL system by simply replacing the
daughtercard.

Digital's new Alpha XL systems are based on the 300 and 366 MHz CPUs and
incorporate a high-performance system architecture with 2 MBytes of
secondary cache, 128-bit memory bus, a 32-bit PCI I/O bus, Fast and Wide
SCSI-2 for high-speed disk access, and integrated Ethernet. The Alpha XL
personal workstations can take on the most demanding technical computing
problems with support for up to 512 MBytes of memory, five drive bays
supporting a floppy drive, a 4x speed CD-ROM, and up to 12 GBytes of
internal storage.

Larry Crume, vice president and general manager of Autodesk's new Kinetix
multimedia business unit, is a strong supporter of Digital's personal
workstations. "Animators, special effects artists, and title developers
are turning to new digital tools that offer workstation-class performance
at PC prices. By developing a new line of personal workstations for
Windows NT -- and by offering both Pentium Pro and Alpha engines --
Digital has demonstrated real commitment and flexibility in meeting the
far-reaching demands of today's entertainment authors."

Jon Hirschtick, CEO and founder of SolidWorks Corporation, one of the first
ISVs to develop production-level solids modeling mechanical design
software for the Windows NT environment, also endorses Digital's personal
workstations. "Digital's personal workstations are the fastest Windows NT
workstation platforms, allowing end users to complete design projects in
record time," he said. "Digital extends SolidWorks' ability to bring
powerful solutions to engineers' desktops at a fraction of the cost of
traditional UNIX workstations."

PowerStorm Advantage for Intel and Alpha Personal Workstations

Digital also announced the availability of the PowerStorm family of 2D and
3D graphics adapters for both Celebris and Alpha XL personal workstations.
PowerStorm adapters are based on the PCI bus and were designed to
accelerate the OpenGL 3D graphics library. The combination of Alpha CPU
performance and PowerStorm graphics on the XL personal workstations result
in workstation-class performance.

Digital offers a broad range of graphics adapters with its PowerStorm
family from the lightning quick PowerStorm 3D30 2D accelerator to the
industry leading PowerStorm 4D60T adapter for 3D solids modeling and
hardware assisted texture mapping.

Software for UNIX-to-Windows NT Interoperability and Desktop Productivity

For a limited time, Digital is bundling several software tools with the XL
family for UNIX and Windows NT interoperability, visualization, and
internet connectivity.

For UNIX and Windows NT connectivity, NFS Maestro will enable users to
share files in heterogeneous environments with network file server (NFS)
capabilities, and eXceed provides X-server capabilities for distributed
computing and viewing of designs between UNIX and Windows NT environments.
Both are from Hummingbird Software.

Digital also is bundling Netscape 2.0 for easy browsing of the Internet,
and 3 Space Viewer from Template Graphics. 3 Space Viewer is a
three-dimensional viewer that enables users to view and incorporate 3D
images from technical applications into productivity software such as
Microsoft Office.

Digital the Premier Provider of Windows NT Solutions

The portfolio of Windows NT-based applications has grown to 1,500.
Technical software for the animation and mechanical computer-aided design
markets available for Windows NT Alpha-based workstations now includes:
Microsoft's Softimage, SolidWorks, Parametric Technology Corporation's
Pro/ENGINEER, Bentley Systems' Microstation Manager, Autodesk, Inc.'s
AutoCAD R13c4, and EDS Unigraphics, among others.

Pricing and Availability

An Alpha XL 300 Personal Workstation with 32 MBytes of memory, a 1 GByte
disk, a Matrox Millenium 2D/3D graphics adapter, CD-ROM, and floppy disk
is $8,495. An Alpha XL 366 Personal Workstation with the same
configuration is $9,995. The Alpha XL 300 is currently available and the
366 version will be available in late May. Upgrades are available from an
Alpha XL 266 to a 366 for $4,995. An upgrade from an Alpha XL 300 to 366
is $3,995. PowerStorm graphics adapters for the Alpha XL systems are
available immediately, and in the Summer for Celebris XL systems.

Digital Equipment Corporation is the world's leader in open client/server
solutions from personal computing to integrated worldwide information
systems. Digital's Intel and Alpha platforms, storage, networking,
software and services, together with industry- focused solutions from
business partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global
marketplace.

All Digital press releases, fact sheets and backgrounders are archived on
ftp.digital.com in the /pub/Digital/info/pr-news directory. They are also
available at http://www.digital.com/info/pr-news/ on the World Wide Web .
 
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