Hitachi introduces world's fastest mainframe computer system; delivers twice the performance in less than half the space; "a turbo-charged, industrial strength screamer of a machine"

Business Wire, April 10, 1995

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 10, 1995--Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) Monday announced a new line of mainframe computers that, on a performance basis, operate at twice the speed of current products while occupying less than half the floor space.

Designed and manufactured by Hitachi, Ltd., the new enterprise computer system, called the HDS Skyline Series(TM), also reduces, on a performance basis, power consumption and cooling costs by more than 70 percent.

Skyline incorporates an innovative integrated circuit technology that permits users to achieve significantly greater performance without imposing any requirements for software changes.

"Customers have asked us for a larger system and we have delivered a turbo-charged, industrial-strength screamer of a machine," said Chris Worrall, HDS' vice president of Systems Product Management.

"Moving up to this new performance level with no disruption and without costly software changes is of tremendous value to our customers. They can now fulfill their growing performance requirements with an efficient, familiar technology without having to adopt less mature solutions offered by other vendors," Worrall said.

"The HDS Skyline processors offer tremendous potential for Oracle MVS customers wanting to increase the throughput of their mainframe data server without making any changes to their existing applications," said Gary Bloom, vice president of Oracle's Mainframe and Integration Technologies Division.

"This machine fills a need in the large systems market for those who have mission-critical computing requirements and a need for increased capacity for their enterprise-wide systems," said David Cahn, director of Product Strategy for fellow software giant Computer Associates. "We particularly like the fact that it gives our clients the opportunity to grow and the room to plan."

According to the Gartner Group, the new system operates at up to 780 MIPS (millions of instructions per second), depending on such variables as operating system, application workload, software and hardware configurations, and usage.

The dramatic performance, power consumption, and floor space advantages of the HDS Skyline are the result of ACE, Hitachi's unique new combined logic device. This technology combines discrete ECL (Emitter Coupled Logic) and CMOS circuit elements within a lattice on the same chip.

The Hitachi approach combines the speed of ECL with the higher density, lower power consumption, and reduced heat output of CMOS, to provide the fastest instruction processor and highest throughput S/390 system in the industry. The technology enables a 13-to-one reduction in components per instruction processor compared with current systems, resulting in reduced operating costs and further improvements in system availability.

"This machine may come as a surprise to those who have been led to believe that the mainframe is dying," said HDS President and CEO John Staedke. "The mainframe is not dying. It's not even sick. But it is changing and has now become the backbone -- or `super node' -- on a network serving an entire enterprise. In other words, HDS Skyline is a true enterprise system.

"Today's announcement will not be a surprise to major IS users in banking, transportation, insurance, manufacturing, services, and government. These, and other commercial and industrial customers, have told us that they need more powerful systems based on existing architecture," Staedke added. "Because HDS is the only S/390 manufacturer committed to a new generation of large-scale enterprise systems, we think we can offer the most credible option for major users."

Recent user surveys have revealed concern about possible miscalculation of the rate at which existing mainframe technology is being replaced by less expensive, CMOS-based enterprise systems. Many users need faster systems than can be provided by current ECL technology, and pure CMOS technology cannot satisfy their high-performance requirements.

"There is another argument that says mainframes will be scrapped in favor of networks of smaller client/server systems. Yet the mainframe is a server -- and more -- in a client/server system. The engine at the heart of the network is a very large server, and large networks will continue to need large servers," said Staedke.

"With the introduction of HDS Skyline, HDS has again shown that it is truly a market leader, and not just in compatible systems," said Staedke. "Today's announcement is the latest in a series of product introductions, including an advanced RAID disk storage system and several open systems products, that demonstrate Hitachi's world-class technological prowess. HDS is also committed to the introduction of System/390 CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) systems as this technology matures.

"We also realize that it takes people to turn technological prowess into business solutions," Staedke added. "In the services arena, we intend to provide focused expertise and methodology to our customers so that they can use those products to deliver measurable results and competitive advantage."