DeskStation Technology was a manufacturer of RISC-based computer workstations intended to run Windows NT

Windows NT

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...

. DeskStation was based in Lenexa

Lenexa, Kansas

Lenexa is a city in the central part of Johnson County, located in northeast Kansas, in the central United States of America. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 48,190. As a satellite city of Kansas City, Kansas, Lenexa is included in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area...

, Kansas

Kansas

Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...

.

MIPS-based systems

Initially, DeskStation designed and produced MIPS

MIPS architecture

MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...

-based workstations, such as the DeskStation Tyne

DeskStation Tyne

The DeskStation Tyne was a line of computer workstations made by DeskStation Technology and based on the MIPS R4000 and R4400 RISC microprocessors...

 v4633x and DeskStation rPC44 (Evolution E4400 RISC PC and Evolution R4400 RISC PC), which conformed to the ARC

Advanced RISC Computing

Advanced RISC Computing is a specification promulgated by a defunct consortium of computer manufacturers , setting forth a standard MIPS RISC-based computer hardware and firmware environment....

 computer specification (and implemented the associated firmware

Firmware

In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices...

). Rather than adopt the Jazz

Jazz (computer)

The Jazz computer architecture was a motherboard and chipset design originally developed by Microsoft for use in developing Windows NT. The design was eventually used as the basis for most MIPS-based Windows NT systems....

 reference design for its MIPS systems, DeskStation developed its own internal bus and chipset systems which offered greater performance compared to the more common Jazz machines. The resulting DeskStation machines began production in 1994, and had an initial price range from $2,990 for a basic system to $6,000 or more for machines with secondary cache and large memory configurations.

Alpha-based systems

Later, when Windows NT was ported to the Alpha

DEC Alpha

Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors...

 architecture, DeskStation created a flexible computer platform that allowed either MIPS or Alpha architectures to be swapped either during production or by the end-user. These machines, part of the DeskStation Raptor series, were called the Raptor Reflex line. In 1998, DeskStation licensed its motherboard designs and chipsets from to Samsung, a DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Alpha licensee.

External links

• A New York Times article mentioning DeskStation
• An entry describing DeskStation from the SIGGRAPH website
• An archive of DeskStation Technology, Inc.'s website
• http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/index.php/Deskstation_rPC44
• http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/index.php/Deskstation_Tyne