Compaq Debuted Industry-Leading Workstation Product Line at SIGGRAPH 97.

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 20, 1997--

Editors' Summary

-- Compaq made its first appearance as an exhibitor at SIGGRAPH this year. Compaq leveraged its leadership in Windows NT-based enterprise servers to introduce the Compaq Professional Workstations 5000, 6000, and 8000. The Compaq Professional Workstation 6000 and 8000 deliver two to four times more memory bandwidth (1.06 GB/sec.) and twice more I/O bandwidth (267 MB/sec.) than any other NT workstation vendor by implementing dual memory controllers and dual-peer PCI buses in a Highly Parallel System Architecture.

-- Compaq Professional Workstations, with 3D graphics cards from Diamond Multimedia and nonlinear editing tools from Tektronix, were chosen as the platform of choice for the creation of dynamic imagery for the SIGGRAPH TV satellite broadcast.

-- Industry notable George Maestri was a key presenter in the Compaq booth, providing tips and tricks for 3D character animation.

-- Pinnacle used Compaq Professional Workstations to demo a new product in Compaq's booth, as well as in the Electric Garden.

-- Compaq provided hands-on training for Adobe After Effects for Windows NT using Compaq Professional Workstations with ICEfx "Effects Editors" in the Compaq booth.

-- The rack-mountable features of Compaq's new workstations were demonstrated by a 32-processor render farm racked together in Compaq's booth rendering frames at high speed using 3D Studio MAX.

In less than one year, Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE:CPQ) has grown in the digital content creation marketplace to become one of the key exhibitors at the industry's premier trade show. Compaq made its first appearance as an exhibitor at SIGGRAPH this year with a new line of Professional Workstations that lead the industry in price/performance and offer compelling standards-based alternatives to the expensive, proprietary technologies of workstation mainstays like Sun and SGI.

Compaq first announced plans to build workstations based on Windows NT and Intel processors at SIGGRAPH 96 in New Orleans. The company entered this year's SIGGRAPH with a family of high-performance Professional Workstation products:

-- Professional Workstation 5000: Supports up to two 200-MHz Pentium Pro processors for reliable, high performance in an economical, desktop package.

-- Professional Workstation 6000: Supports up to two 266-MHz or 300-MHz Pentium II processors for the ultimate in compute power, as well as six slots and 10 bays (supporting more than 50 GB of disk space) for optimal expandability. Compaq's Highly Parallel System Architecture provides 2-4 times the memory bandwidth (1.06GB/s) and twice the I/O bandwidth (267 MB/second) of other Windows NT systems for unbeatable system performance.

-- Professional Workstation 8000: Combines the parallel system architecture and expandability of the Professional Workstation 6000 with support for up to four 200 MHz Pentium. Pro processors for blinding performance. Packs more memory capacity than any other workstation in its class (up to 3GB). Like the Professional Workstation 6000, the Professional Workstation 8000 can be rack-mounted to deliver a powerful, standards-based render farm solution.

In the past year, Compaq has also developed a professional worldwide sales and marketing organization and has forged a wealth of strategic relationships with key application vendors in diverse markets, including computer-aided design and engineering, digital content creation and financial markets.

Within a year, Compaq has announced the formation of the company's workstation division, introduced a competitive workstation product line and become a leading NT workstation vendor," said John T. Rose, Senior Vice President and Group General Manager, Enterprise Computing Group, Compaq Computer Corporation. "This success can be attributed to our commitment to providing customers with leading-edge technology that delivers uncompromising performance on affordable, standards-based platforms."

From Behind the Scenes to Everywhere You Look

At SIGGRAPH 97, Compaq participated in a broad array of activities, including behind-the-scenes contributions in SIGGRAPH TV and a highly visible presence in the exhibitors' area.

Compaq activities at SIGGRAPH 97 included the following:

-- SIGGRAPH TV. SIGGRAPH TV provided coverage of live events, recorded programming, and video of SIGGRAPH 97. The highly charged SIGGRAPH TV broadcast, which was distributed throughout the Convention Center, across North America via satellite, and globally on the Internet, included computer generated imagery created on Compaq Professional Workstations with Diamond Fire GL 4000 3D graphics.

-- Adobe After Effects sessions. Compaq provided hands-on training in the Compaq booth for Adobe After Effects for Windows NT, a powerful tool for digital compositing, 2D animation and special effects -- recently released for Windows NT and Windows 95. The application is an ideal fit for the multiprocessor-capable Compaq Professional Workstations because it takes full advantage of the features of the Windows NT environment, including the performance benefits offered by support for multiple processors. Effects creation was accelerated even further by the ICEfx rendering engine from Integrated Computer Engines (ICE), which Compaq used in more than 15 Professional Workstations in its booth. ICEfx is a hardware/software "Effects Editor" that greatly speeds the rendering of compute-intensive special effects and provides specialized filters developed by ICE and third-party vendors.

-- George Maestri presentation. Noted writer, animator, and director George Maestri presented tips and tricks for digital character animation in Compaq's booth. Maestri has written and directed both traditional and computer animation for Film Roman, Nickelodeon, MGM, ABC, CBS, Fox and others. He has also written numerous articles and columns on computer animation for magazines such as Digital Magic, Computer Graphics World, DV, Publish and New Media.

-- Pinnacle technology demo. Compaq Professional Workstations were also the hardware platform for Pinnacle's demonstration of a new PCI-based, nonlinear video editing engine for Windows NT. The product was shown in Compaq's booth and in the Electric Garden, which featured new and emerging technologies from various companies.

Compaq Professional Workstations were also demonstrated in third-party booths at SIGGRAPH, including Alien Skin, Diamond Multimedia, ELSA, Evans & Sutherland, Hitachi, ICE, Intel, Kinetix, Matrox, Pinnacle, SIGGRAPH Creative Applications Lab, Symmetric, Template Graphics and Ultimatte.

More information about Compaq workstations can be found at the following URL: www.compaq.com/products/workstations/index.html

Company Background

Compaq Computer Corporation, a Fortune 100 company, is the fifth largest computer company in the world and the largest global supplier of personal computers, delivering useful innovation through products that connect people with people and people with information. The company is an industry leader in environmentally friendly programs and business practices. Compaq is strategically organized to meet the current and future needs of its customers, offering Internet and enterprise computing solutions, networking products, commercial PC products and consumer PCs. As the leader in distributed enterprise solutions, Compaq has shipped over a million servers. In 1996, the company reported worldwide sales of $18.1 billion. Compaq products are sold and supported in more than 100 countries through a network of authorized Compaq marketing partners. Customer support and information about Compaq and its products can be found at http://www.compaq.com or by calling 1-800-OK-COMPAQ. Product information and reseller locations can be obtained by calling 1-800-345-1518. -0-

Compaq, Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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