Digital Equipment Corporation
                                               Maynard, Massachusetts 01754-2571


                    NEWEST ALPHA MICROPROCESSOR HITS 500MHz,
                   ALPHA TOPS FOR WINDOWS NT VISUAL COMPUTING

           Alpha Family Leads in Performance, Gets New, Lower Pricing


MAYNARD, Mass., July 8, 1996 -- Digital Equipment Corporation  strengthened  its
four-year claim to the world's fastest and  highest-performance  microprocessors
with today's announcement of 500MHz and 433MHz versions of its Alpha 21164  RISC
microprocessor. With peak execution rates of up to 2 BIPS, these  top-performing
chips push the performance envelope for visual computing  applications  such  as
video conferencing, 3-D modeling, video  editing,  multimedia  authoring,  image
rendering, and animation.

Performance of the new Alpha 21164-500MHz chip is estimated  at  15.4  SPECint95
and 21.1 SPECfp95, making it the industry's  highest-performance  RISC  or  CISC
microprocessor for  both  integer  and  floating  point  operations.  The  Alpha
21164-433MHz chip is estimated to deliver 13.3 SPECint95 and 18.4 SPECfp95.


Superior Benchmark Results

The Alpha 21164 product family's superior performance enables it to  handle  the
tremendous workload in 3-D graphics  and  motion  video  faster  than  competing
platforms, including those with special multimedia instructions, with CPU  power
to spare for other tasks.  In  tests  using  a  suite  of  3-D  image  rendering
benchmarks from Softimage, a  366MHz  Alpha XL  PC  performed,  on  average,  31
percent faster than a Silicon  Graphics  Indigo 2 Extreme  workstation,  and  72
percent faster than an Intergraph TDZ 300/GLZ system based on the 150MHz Pentium
Pro chip.

"In those same tests, we expect a 500MHz Alpha system to run 75  percent  faster
than the SGI workstation and well over twice as fast as the Intergraph  TDZ  300
system," said William  N.  Johnson,  vice  president  of  marketing  at  Digital
Semiconductor, a Digital Equipment Corporation business.


Industry Accolades for Alpha

"Digital's 500MHz Alpha 21164 should keep Alpha in the performance lead, even as
Intel rolls  out  its  0.28-micron  process  for  Pentium  Pro  in  1997,"  said
MicroDesign Resources analyst Linley Gwennap. "Alpha performance  has  increased
by an impressive 70 percent since the Pentium Pro was announced last fall."

According to analyst Tim Sloane of the Aberdeen Group, "There is  an  increasing
trend for high-end graphics, imaging, and video software vendors to  port  their
applications  to  Windows NT  and  to  offer  desktop  implementations  via  the
Internet. This trend presents an excellent opportunity for Digital  to  position
Alpha as the price/performance  benchmark  in  a  new  market  segment  for  the
professional Windows desktop."

Glenn Campbell, Area 51 visual effects supervisor for the futuristic  television
feature, "Space -- Above and Beyond," said, "Alpha systems give us the best bang
for the buck. I can buy five Alphas and put five animators to work for the price
of one Silicon Graphics Indigo Extreme machine with software and licensing."


New Pricing for Alpha Chips

Alpha 21164 microprocessors are now available in the following range  of  speeds
and price points:


     Processor                    Price (1,000 units)


     Alpha 21164-300MHz           $695
     Alpha 21164-366MHz           $950
     Alpha 21164-433MHz           $1,492


The above microprocessors are all available for shipment.  The  500MHz  chip  is
sampling now and will be available in September. In addition, Alpha 21164  board
products, featuring standard PC components and form factors, are also  available
now.

Digital Semiconductor, a Digital Equipment Corporation business headquartered in
Hudson,  Massachusetts,  designs,  manufactures  and  markets   industry-leading
semiconductor  products  including  Alpha  microprocessors  and  PCI  chips  for
networking, bridging, and multimedia, plus low-power  StrongARM  microprocessors
under license from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. Mitsubishi  Electric  Corporation
and  Samsung  Electronics  Company  Ltd.  are  alternate   sources   for   Alpha
microprocessors. World Wide Web site: http://www.digital.com/info/semiconductor

Digital Equipment Corporation  is  the  world's  leader  in  open  client/server
solutions from personal computing to integrated worldwide  information  systems.
Digital's Intel and Alpha platforms, storage, networking, software and services,
together  with  industry-focused  solutions   from   business   partners,   help
organizations compete and win in today's global marketplace.

                                      ####

Note to Editors:  Digital, Digital  Semiconductor,  and  the  Digital  logo  are
                  trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation.

                  Windows and Softimage are registered  trademarks  and  Windows
                  NT is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

                  Silicon Graphics and SGI are registered trademarks and  Indigo
                  Extreme is a trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc.

                  Intergraph is a registered trademark and TDZ is a trademark of
                  Intergraph Corporation.

                  Lightwave is a registered trademark of NewTek, Inc.

                  SPEC  is  a  registered  trademark   of   System   Performance
                  Evaluation Corporation.

                  StrongARM is a trademark of Advanced RISC Machines Ltd.

                  Intel is a registered trademark and Pentium Pro is a trademark
                  of Intel Corporation.

CORP/97/299