News release

Newest Addition to Compaq's AlphaServer ES40 Product Line Sets Performance Standards in Oracle, SAP Benchmarks; Powers Next Generation Genomics Research

Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ), a leading global provider of technology and solutions, today unveiled the industry's most powerful microprocessor, the 64-bit, 833 MHz Alpha microprocessor, which already has set performance standards in the scientific and commercial market sectors.

Shipments of Compaq AlphaServer™ ES40 systems with the new 0.18 micron Alpha microprocessor have been underway for more than a month. An early user is Celera Genomics, which today, at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., is participating in the formal presentation of its published paper detailing the first complete mapping of the human genome.

Scientists from Celera Genomics are making this announcement along with researchers from the Whitehead Institute of M.I.T., the Sanger Centre from the United Kingdom and the National Institutes of Health as part of today's historic achievement. In completing the human genome sequencing, Celera relied exclusively on networked Compaq AlphaServer systems running Tru64™ UNIX and TruCluster ™ software to manage more than 70 terabytes of data to perform some of the most complex computations in the history of supercomputing.

For further information, visit http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/news/celera_hgp_0201.html.

"Today's announcement further demonstrates our ability to provide scientific and commercial customers worldwide with integrated solutions based on innovative products to meet their most transaction-intensive computing needs," said Don Harbert, vice president of Compaq's High Performance Server Group."

"With our focus on providing high-performance enterprise computing solutions, we have seen AlphaServer systems revenue grow at a rate of 20 percent per year and our UNIX growth rate has been more than 30 percent—more than twice the industry average," added Harbert.

"Compaq's AlphaServer technology was an integral part of our ability to accelerate the mapping of the human genome, helping us beat our aggressive estimates by two years," said Marshall Peterson, Vice President of Infrastructure Technology for Celera Genomics. "Our benchmarks have demonstrated a 72 percent performance improvement with the new Alpha processor. The AlphaServer systems with the new processor will further accelerate our important research in the life sciences."

AlphaServer ES40 systems with the new 833 MHz processor also will be used as the initial technology platform for the recently announced agreement between the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories, Celera and Compaq to jointly develop a next generation supercomputer by 2004. The supercomputer, which will be capable of processing 100 trillion operations per second (100 TeraOPS), will be used to develop software and computer hardware solutions specifically designed for the demands of computational biology, as well as a full range of life sciences applications.

AlphaServer ES40 Systems - Serving Up the Data Faster

The increased performance of the AlphaServer ES40 system appeals directly to customers who rely on CPU intensive applications, such as data mining and data analysis, to provide the most current view of supply chain, business trends, or customer relationship management (CRM) data. Faster data provides a more accurate view of the business, which results in more effective and business-wise decisions. The majority of these types of applications present a single stream of data, which can be most effectively processed through a few powerful processors.

The AlphaServer ES40 system supports Compaq Tru64 UNIX, OpenVMS™, and the Linux operating systems. Tru64 UNIX and OpenVMS clustering technology, combined with availability features engineered into the AlphaServer ES40 system, ensure extremely high availability system characteristics, with significant ease-of-management features.

The performance of the AlphaServer ES40 system with the new Alpha processor has been documented in benchmark results which are being announced today. This includes establishing new standards in the Oracle Applications benchmark, the SAP Business Warehousing benchmark and the SPEC CPU2000 industry standard benchmark, with a SPECint2000 result of 544 and a SPECfp result of 658. For four-processor SPECfp_rate2000 results, the Compaq ES40 system is 1.5 - 2.3 times faster than comparable systems from Silicon Graphics, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun.

Oracle Applications Benchmark

An AlphaServer ES40 system with the 833 MHz processor and 32 GB of memory set a new Oracle Applications benchmark record with (4,536) users and a response time of (1.23 seconds), more than doubling the top performance of competitive servers. The result demonstrates how the combination of the Oracle e-Business Suite running on the Oracle 8i database on Compaq's AlphaServer platform provides customers with unparalleled e-business performance.

SAP Business Information Warehouse Benchmark

An AlphaServer ES40 system using the new microprocessor and 8 GB of memory running TruUNIX and Oracle8i as the database software also set a new mid-range system record in the SAP Business Information Warehouse benchmark. The AlphaServer system delivered an average throughput of 25 million rows per hour for the load phase (step 1), more than 168 million rows per hour for the realignment phase (step 2), and more than 46,000 query navigation steps per hour. The benchmark demonstrates the AlphaServer system's ability to meet the needs of organizations running high-intensity business intelligence applications on mid-range servers with superior price/performance configuration. In addition, Compaq recently established a record-breaking high-end SAP Business Information Warehouse benchmark with its AlphaServer GS320 system.