HP Delivers Next-generation Value-leading Workstations

Industry Leader Provides Engineers with World-class Performance at a Highly Aggressive Price

Palo Alto, Calif., Feb. 7, 2000

Hewlett-Packard Company today re-entered the price-sensitive portion of the UNIX® system workstation market with the introduction of the HP VISUALIZE B2000 workstation, featuring the new HP VISUALIZE fxe full-featured graphics subsystem. The system provides cost-conscious engineers and designers in Electronic Design Automation (EDA) and Mechanical Design Automation (MDA) with the best balance of graphics power, stability, price and computing performance in a UNIX system.

By introducing the HP VISUALIZE B2000 workstation, HP has brought power-desktop performance to engineers for an entry-level price. It will appeal particularly to customers who require the following:

"We've removed cost as a barrier to accessing high-performance computing platforms," said Jim Zafarana, worldwide marketing manager for HP's Technical Computing Division. "The HP VISUALIZE B2000 workstation provides designers and engineers with an easy-to-use, affordable UNIX system that complements our entire VISUALIZE product family. The HP VISUALIZE family gives organizations the flexibility to choose the level of functionality that best meets their business needs, and the longevity of our products gives them confidence that their needs will be met as their businesses grow."

The HP VISUALIZE B2000 workstation accelerates the CAD design and 3-D solid-modeling process for subassemblies and components. This aggressively priced system also is ideal for the design of PCBs and medium-size ASICs, software applications, managing customer-care systems, and providing engineers with UNIX systems for small- to medium-size IC design and verification.

Unparalleled Graphics Performance at an Aggressive Price

The HP VISUALIZE B2000 includes fxe graphics, the newest version of HP's industry-leading advanced graphics subsystems. The fxe graphics accelerator offers full 3-D functionality, performance, motion video, texture mapping support and full 3-D JavaTM and VRML support. VISUALIZE fxe offers the industry's only universal 3-D functionality across all workstation platforms and supplies 24-bit imaging up to 1600 x 1200 resolution on a single display. The VISUALIZE fxe accelerator features sophisticated shading, lighting, depth cueing and accelerated texture capabilities, enabling customers to visualize projects in real time.

U.S. Pricing and Availability

The HP VISUALIZE B2000 workstation is available now and ships with HP-UX1 10.20 or HP-UX 11 and CoCreate's FirstSpace VRML viewer. The HP VISUALIZE B2000 is available for an estimated U.S. street price starting at $4,9952.

About HP's Technical Computing Division

HP's Technical Computing Division is the world's leading provider of real-world application compute power and innovative, high-performance graphics that enable advanced interactive visualization and rapid virtual prototyping. Designer productivity is the workstation division's primary objective. Consistent delivery of unmatched enterprisewide technical-computing solutions has made the Technical Computing Division a leader in the most demanding technical markets, helping the world's engineers, scientists and artists resolve the toughest design problems.

More information about the HP VISUALIZE Workstation family and its technical-computing range is available on the Web at http://www.hp.com/go/technical.

About HP

Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services for business and home -- is focused on capitalizing on the opportunities of the Internet and the proliferation of electronic services.

HP plans to launch Agilent Technologies as an independent company by mid-calendar 2000. Agilent consists of HP's test and measurement, semiconductor products, chemical analysis and healthcare solutions businesses, and has leading positions in multiple market segments.

HP has 83,200 employees worldwide and had total revenue from continuing operations of $42.4 billion in its 1999 fiscal year. Information about HP, its products and the company's Year 2000 program can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.

  1. HP-UX Release 10.20 and later and HP-UX Release 11.00 and later (in both 32- and 64-bit configurations) on all HP 9000 computers are Open Group UNIX 95 branded products.
  2. Actual prices may vary.

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.

Java is a U.S. trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

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