Be Announces BeOS Support for New
Multiprocessor PowerPC Systems

RELEASED JANUARY 7, 1997

For more information contact

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Alex Osadzinski, alex@be.com
+1 (650) 462-4126

Europe:
Jean Calmon, jcalmon@beeurope.com
(33) 1 49 06 73 75

BE® ANNOUNCES BeOS SUPPORT FOR NEW
MULTIPROCESSOR POWERPC SYSTEMS
Macworld demonstrations on single and dual processor systems up to 300MHz.

MACWORLD EXPO, SAN FRANCISCO, Calif (January 7, 1997) -- At Macworld Expo today, Be announced and demonstrated its support of new high-speed PowerPC microprocessors introduced by IBM, and high-speed multiprocessor and single processor systems PowerPC systems introduced by Power Computing. In addition, the company demonstrated Be Operating System (BeOS(tm)) support for DayStar's multiprocessor products, which are used in systems by DayStar, Apple Computer, and SuperMac.

Many of the new systems announced at Macworld make use of new PowerPC microprocessors introduced by IBM. Power Computing demonstrated for the first time a single processor PowerPC 603 system operating at 300 MHz. Power also introduced multiprocessor systems based on dual PowerPC 604s running at either 225 MHz or 250 MHz, the fastest 604-based designs yet produced.

Be will include support for these systems in the next release of the BeOS. In a separate announcement this week, the company confirmed this release will ship as scheduled in the first quarter.

"There has always been a chicken-and-egg problem for multiprocessor systems -- there was no software that took advantage of multiple processors, and thus little demand for hardware, and thus little demand for MP software." said Jean-Louis Gassée, president and CEO of Be, Inc. "The BeOS represents a new generation of software designed specifically for multiprocessor systems, delivering that power to users and developers. 1997 will be the year in which MP systems take over the high end, and they'll continue to spread from there."

The BeOS was designed from the beginning to support multiple processors in a single system, a feature known as multiprocessing. The design of the BeOS goes further, however, in that the operating system -- and the applications written for it -- make heavy use of multithreading -- breaking down complex operations at all levels of the OS into smaller operations which can be executed in parallel. The result is a personal computer platform which takes maximum advantage of every microprocessor in the computer, and provides much higher performance than systems based on even the highest speed single processors.

"Most of the work in supporting these new MP systems lies in the hardware abstraction layer of the BeOS. Once we understand the hardware implementation, providing BeOS support is straightforward.," said Bob Herold, engineering lead for new system support at Be.

At Macworld Expo, being held January 7-10 in San Francisco, Be is demonstrating the BeOS on the following new systems;

PowerComputing Dual PowerPC 604 @ 250 MHz
Demonstrated by PowerComputing, this system includes the highest performing PowerPC microprocessor yet produced. In addition, Be demonstrated the BeOS running on Power's dual 604 systems running at 225 MHz. Both these systems, when available, will include the BeOS bundled with the product.

DayStar Dual PowerPC Support
Be also demonstrated support for DayStar's dual PowerPC 604 processor cards, used in systems built by DayStar, Apple Computer, and SuperMac/UMAX. Currently the DayStar implementation runs at 180, 200 and 225 MHz. Be also stated that it will support DayStar's four processor systems, and both dual and quad processor support will be included in the Q1 release of the BeOS.

PowerComputing PowerPC 603 @ 300 MHz
Shown for the first time at Macworld by Power Computing and IBM, this is the fastest implementation of the PowerPC 603 yet demonstrated. These systems will include the BeOS bundled when they become available.

The demonstrations of the BeOS running on the new systems can be seen during Macworld Expo at the Be company booth in the south hall, and at the Power Computing booth in the north hall. In addition, BeOS systems can be seen at IBM's, Metrowerk's, and ATI's booths.

Be, Inc. was founded by Jean-Louis Gassée in 1990 to overcome the limitations of existing computer architectures. With a team of industry-leading engineers and business executives in the United States and Europe, the company has positioned itself to become a key player in fast-growing application markets. Be, Inc. is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

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