Intel Press Release

Intel Advances Workstation Platform With Industry Motherboard And Chassis Specification

ORLANDO, Fla., July 21, 1998 – At Siggraph '98, Intel Corporation announced it is leading an industry-wide effort to define two common, high-volume motherboard and system specifications for the workstation market segment. These specifications, WTX and WTX Pro, will be presented this fall at the Intel Developer's Forum.

The WTX and WTX Pro chassis specifications, for midrange and high-end workstations, respectively, should result in a simplified design process and reduced development costs for OEMs manufacturing Intel-based workstations. The specifications include support for workstation features such as dual processing, large system memories, Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) 4x graphics specification and AGP Pro graphics cards, and high-bandwidth I/O.

Intel's efforts in driving the new chassis specification are consistent with Intel's strategy to provide technical leadership and products to all facets of the workstation market segment, from processor advancements such as the Pentium® II Xeon™ processor for workstations to platform innovations to initiatives with key workstation OEMs and application vendors.

WTX and WTX Pro-compliant motherboards and systems will include the following capabilities:

  • dual processor IA-32 and IA-64™ support;
  • thermal, mechanical and power envelopes optimized for high-end APG Pro graphics cards;
  • stable, functional partitioning designed to support multiple generations of graphics, memory technology, I/O and Intel® Architecture microprocessors; and
  • industry standard chassis, power supply and motherboard form factors optimized for leading-edge workstations.

"The WTX and WTX Pro motherboard form factor and chassis specifications are another example of Intel driving processor and chip set technologies into the highest end of the workstation market segment," said Anand Chandrasekher, general manager of Intel's Workstation Products Division. "We are committed to the workstation market and taking the steps necessary to make Intel-based workstations the first choice for users across all performance levels."

WTX and WTX Pro are supported by leading OEMs such as Compaq, Fijutsu, Gateway, IBM, Intergraph, Hewlett-Packard, NEC, SGI, SNI and UMAX.

"HP, the leading workstation supplier, supports this form factor specification," said Jean Charles Miard, general manager of the PC Workstation division at Hewlett Packard. "HP plans to ship WTX-compliant motherboards and chassis in 1999, leveraging the capabilities of WTX to provide state-of-the-art performance and the most innovative workstation features."

"Compaq is pleased to be working with Intel to develop an industry standard workstation motherboard and chassis specification," said Les Crudele, vice president and general manager of Compaq's Workstation Division. "Initiatives like this allow us to deliver the robust features our workstation customers require."

"The WTX form factor fills the void between industry standard PC and server components," said Dr. Sathish Gupta, general manager, IBM Professional Workstation products. "IBM supports Intel's WTX and WTX Pro initiatives as the workstation industry specification for the next five years and beyond."

"NEC supports Intel's efforts to define a form factor specification for multiple workstation and chipset and processor generations," said Kazuhiko Kobayashi, associate senior vice president of NEC Corporation. "This effort directly addresses users' needs for the future and will allow NEC to aggressively penetrate the workstation marketplace."

"Supporting Dual Processor IA-32 and IA-64 workstations is a key feature of the WTX specification," said Dr. Bernd Kosch, director of the Workstation Technology Center, Siemens Nixdorf InformationsSysteme AG. "Adopting WTX compliant motherboards and chassis will allow us to enhance the performance and features of our already leading workstation products."

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