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Report
Southern California Distribution Issue 01 Part 05
Industry Trends
OS Wars
As of now, seems like the war between Unix and OS/2 really hasn't
arosen much attention. Performance wise, OS/2 outperforms Unix in single
user tasks, which is what OS/2 is designed to do. The only reason why
Unix cannot dominate the desktop market even after all these year is that
it lacks proper software support, and that is where OS/2 is strong at
although most people do not notice it. In any way, DOS will still be the
dominant system for years to come, and until OS/2 2.0 proves to be extremely
flexible and improved in space and speed, no significant difference will
result.
Compacted Systems
AMD has already announced its new 286 chip, the 286ZX/LX. These chips
have integrated all major motherboard functions such as DMA control,
DRAM control, etc. into the chip itself, thus reducing system design cost
for the manufacturer and also increases the system performance. AMD also
has a prototype of a 386-clone chip that will survive Intel's law suits.
If this prototype actually comes to the market, we'll probably begin to
see a faster batch of 386's, since AMD has proved itself to be able to
design chips better than Intel. That is a great prospect for us, the end
users since it'll reduce the cost of the 386 further, and instead of us
paying at Intel's high price of roughly $350 a chip.
Multimedia
A very challanging time for Multimedia. Commodore has released the
Amiga 3000, the so-called multimedia machine, which is actually capable
of only low-level multi-media tasks, unless it is outfitted with devices
such as the Toaster Board, and a huge hard drive. The real Multimedia market
prospect is in Macintosh II and Enhanced IBM's.
The Mac II market is already established, and since this is an IBM
publication, we won't go into any details for the Mac or Amiga. For IBM,
Multimedia has finally came through. IBM's AVC system proves to be a great
Multimedia system in terms of animation and sound effects. The new
M-Motion card further advances the Multimedia technology on IBM's, and
with the advant of CD-ROM technologies such as DVI, Multimedia is no
longer a dream on IBM systems. New DVI boards are emerging quickly, such
as IBM's own ActionMedia 750. The joint venture between IBM and Intel will
prove to be a successful Multimedia developement team. HDTV systems whould
be available by 1992, with a resolution line of 1050, it should prove
to be a great step away from the old NTSC format.
Optical Devices
Optical devices are really going places this year, with Sierra's
announcement of their support for CD-ROM's, and even more companies
beginning to manufacture WORMs and Magneto-Opticals, the prices are bound
to drop soon.
New Possiblities
There is already one known company to have developed a 860/486
parallel processing motherboard. This new design will provide maximum
power to the end user, with the 860's pure processing power, the system
with it installed will have power comparable to that of a Full-Blown
Workstation.
Cunfusion of OS/2 Microsoft & IBM Joint Venture
There seems to be a confusion of the joint venture between Microsoft
and IBM. Latest reports indicate that Microsoft not only is working on
OS/2 3.0, It is also working on the OS/2 2.0 Developer's Edition(SDK).
Standards and Mutations
SCSI now has finally became more standardized. The old SCSI-1 interface
has many manufacturers popped up with mutated command sets, and cause
problems between devices. The new SCSI-2 will prevent the problem. Upcoming
SCSI-3 will further expand on the capabilities of SCSI-2, and the performance
will finally actually surpass fast ESDI systems(When installed in MCA or EISA).
The recommended SCSI board manufacturers are Adaptec and Future Domain.
