The competitive point made was relatively minor. In a market where vendors regularly leap frog each other in workstation performance, IBM announced it had the advantage for the moment. But behind the spotlight, IBM was rehearsing a larger screenplay, one in which its older generation of Power3-II chip, built into its entry level Model 170 workstation, beat Sun's most advanced UltraSparc III chips. And you ain't seen nothing yet, IBM spokesman Jim McGaughan seemed to say.
When IBM's Power4 chip emerges next year, it will overwhelm the existing Power3-II's and UltraSparc III's performance, not only in workstations but in the respective server lines that Power4 and UltraSparc III will be designed into, he said.
IBM's breast beating comes at a time when Sun's stock price has dropped to its 52-week low, based on analyst skepticism that it can produce as many UltraSparc III Sun Blade 1000 workstations as planned. "We believe there are yield issues regarding the UltraSparc III (chip)," wrote Merrill Lynch's Tom Kraemer Monday. Sun officials counter they will produce workstations and servers based on UltraSparc III as planned over the next six months.
But IBM chose yesterday to talk up the Model 170 workstation running a standard graphics package, the Parametric Technology (www.parametric.com) mechanical computer-aided design CDRS software used by aerospace and automotive engineers. When run against the Sun Blade 1000, the Model 170 received a benchmark rating of 32.03 to the Sun Blade's 17.28, said McGaughan.
The Parametric CDRS MCAD software is one of a series of workstation tests in the SPECviewperf benchmark series. The SPECviewperf was established by an ad hoc group under the non-profit Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation to measure 3D rendering by a graphics workstation.
The Sun Blade was a closer match under several other tests in the series, but the IBM Model 170 came out ahead in the three tests run on both machines. Both graphics workstations function with a graphics accelerator card whose performance can influence the outcomes as well.
Nevertheless, IBM's underlying message was clear. The aging Power3-II chip was more than a match for UltraSparc. And by the fourth quarter of the coming year, IBM will be churning out workstations and servers based on Power4. It will have 170 million transistors etched into silicon. The Power3-II has just 23 million, Gaughan said.
