(Nikkei BP Group)
(No.1 High-Tech News Site in Japanese)
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| Hitachi's Next-Generation Mainframe to Be Unveiled Soon
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August 25, 1998 (TOKYO) -- Hitachi Ltd. and Hitachi Data Systems Corp.
(HDS) of the United States will unveil a new generation Skyline mainframe
computer, an IBM-compatible machine, by the end of the year, according
to informed sources.
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The new machine is a super large scale processor that can operate about
2.5 times faster than the current Skyline.
The companies said the announcement had initially been planned for the
spring of 1999 of a Skyline model to run IBM's OS/390.
IBM Corp. (in May) and Amdahl Corp. of the United States together with
Fujitsu Ltd. (in June) announced their own new CMOS processors with
125 MIPS performance levels.
At the end of July, IBM released an enhanced G5 model that can perform
at 150 MIPS as a processor unit.
The timing of Hitachi's announcement is accelerated by almost half a
year because the IBM and Amdahl/Fujitsu models have reached or exceeded
the Skyline's performance in their maximum system configuration for
symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP).
The new model to be announced by the end of this year has two major features:
(1) the ACE technology, combining CMOS and ECL on a processor chip,
will be applied to future Skylines, and (2) expansion of scalability
from the current maximum eight-processor configuration to that with
a maximum of 12 processors.
By estimating the single-processor performance of the new model based
on information from Hitachi's executives, the new model will be able
to operate at about 280 MIPS, just less than twice the performance of
the current Skyline (150 MIPS).
It can produce single-system performance of more than 2,300 MIPS in the
maximum 12-processor configuration, or about 2.5 times faster than the
current Skyline at 970 MIPS in the maximum eight-processor configuration.
As for competing technologies, the enhanced G5 model of IBM S/390 performs
at about 1,040 MIPS in a maximum configuration with 10 processors, and
the Millennium800 of Amdahl/Fujitsu attains more than 1,000 MIPS in
the maximum configuration with 12 processors. Therefore, Hitachi's succeeding
machine to Skyline is more powerful than those competing products with
twice the system performance.
As for delivery schedules, Hitachi will likely start sales of the successor
to the present Skyline mainframe in the second or third quarter of 1999,
while IBM plans to deliver the enhanced G5 in September 1998 and Amdahl/Fujitsu
to deliver Millennium800 in the first quarter of 1999.
Related story : Hitachi
Debuts High-End Mainframes Targeted at Japan
(Nikkei Watcher on IT Business)
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