Sony NEWS

The Sony NEWS ("Network Engineering Workstation", later "NetWorkStation") is a series of Unix workstations sold during the late 1980s and 1990s. The first NEWS machine was the NWS-800, which originally appeared in Japan in January 1987 and was conceived as a desktop replacement for the VAX series of minicomputers.

Sony's NEWS project leader, Toshitada Doi, originally wanted to develop a computer for business applications, but his engineers wanted to develop a replacement for minicomputers running Unix that they preferred to use:

In the beginning, Doi's concept of the workstation was a device, which was essentially an extension of current MIPS projects. He saw it as consisting of "a 32-bit CPU developed in a short time with unrestricted applications." Basically, he thought of it as an OA computer. However, the engineers Doi selected for his team did not listen to what Doi told them to do. They wanted to develop a workstation that could replace the VAX Super Mini Computer developed by Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC). This was a computer that the engineers often fought with each other to use while at MIPS because of the limited number. They wanted to develop something they themselves could use for their own day to day work.

Initial development of the NEWS was completed in 1986 after only one year of development. It launched at a lower price than competitors (¥950,000 to ¥2.75 million), and it outperformed conventional minicomputers. After a successful launch, the line expanded and the new focus for the NEWS became desktop publishing and CAD/CAM.

The Sony NEWS was unable to break into the U.S. market, where Sun Microsystems was dominant, and also did not fare well in Europe.

The NEWS platform was later used for video-on-demand applications, and for Internet server applications.

The NEWS division at Sony was dissolved in 1998.

The Sony NEWS originally came equipped with a dual 680x0 (68020 or 68030) processor configuration running at 16-25 MHz. Later, the Sony NEWS was moved to the MIPS architecture, with MIPS III and MIPS IV microprocessors such as the R3000, R4000, R4400, R4600, R4700, and R10000. The fastest MIPS processors used in Sony NEWS workstations ran at 200 MHz.

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