Bull SA believes it has turned up trumps with the additions to its DPS 7000 range of transactional systems of two high-level systems, which it claims to be the most powerful data processing system ever developed in Europe, and three filing-cabinet size entry-level models designed for office use (CI No 1,366). The entire range uses the the GCOS 7 operating system which has now been enhanced – Bull hopes these new machines, with a range of five to 260 tranactions per second on the debit-crediit benchmark, will broaden the market of the series to smaller businesses as well as large organisations.
Oracle
Across the hardware the same TDS transactional monitor and operating system are used. The database management tools, namely the IDS II network database system and Oracle Corp’s Oracle relational database management system, are also standard and are integrated with the operating system and the transactional system. The DPS 7000/500 is aimed at relational and transactional applications such as Oracle, and the DPS 7000/700 is designed for a large number of users accessing information and decision support applications. They both use a common central processing unit built in VLSI CMOS – up to now, Bull has built its mainframes in the Current Mode Logic bipolar technology. With up to half a million transistors on one square centimetre of silicon chip it enables a higher level of integration and performance, offering up to five times the performance of the DPS 7000 machines currently marketed, while using lower power. Bull has said it will continue to support the existing DPS 7000 machines both in hardware and software terms. The internal system architecture of the new machines uses a dual bus which supports up to six processor, with 500Mbytes-per-second aggregate transfer rate on both system and memory bus. Up to 4,000 active users can be supported on the IDS II database, or 1,000 using the Oracle relational database, Bull claims. The GCOS 7 operating system features remote operation and maintenance, network communication, personal computer integration and can exchange data with Unix systems using the TCP/IP protocol. The DPS 7000/500 series comprises three single processors ranging from 35 to 70 transactions per second. Making up the DPS 7000/700 series are four multi-processor models: the two dual-processor, one four-processor and one six-processor which range from 70 to 260 debit-credit transactions per second.
By Elvadia Tolputt
The DPS 7000/A server has a 7.5 square foot footprint, uses very little power and can serve up to 265 simultaneous users in transaction processing mode, 75 users with Oracle. It comes in mono-processor and dual-processor models, main memory goes to 64Mb and a maximum of nine hard disks storing up to 5.9Gb are supported. It takes one or two cartridge tape units at 1Gb each, and a multiline communications processor which supports connection to Ethernet, Starlan, X21 or X25 type networks and can exchange data with Unix clusters. Bull is moving toward new partnerships with software houses and system integrators undertaking to develop applications and join Bull in selling solutions on the new servers. Such software developers get advantageous financial terms, notably a 40% discount, when purchasing the 7000/A servers for application development, as well as strengthened technical and marketing support. There are at present some 400 application software products that run under GCOS 7. So far over 50 of these low-end servers have been installed in software houses over the past few months and they are available immediately. The high-end machines are available for order now but will take a few months before delivery. The development of the DPS 7000 line are the fruits result of Groupe Bull’s research in France, and are estimated to have cost 800 man-years of effort. The new models are presently being manufactured in France and within the next few months they will also be made in the US. Bull admits there is now some overlap between the larger DPS 7000 range with the DPS 8000 range which uses the GCOS 8 ope
rating system, there are no plans to merge the two series, though some of the technology used in the DPS 8000 has been used in the DPS 7000 series. Bull says that the the customer market is different for each range. Eventually Bull will increase the power of the DPS 8000 and DPS 9000 series with new models. As the Chinese and Eastern European industries are not very advanced, Bull believes there will eventually be an enormous market for the Series 7000 due its wide range of performance from relatively cost-effective low-end to high level mainframes.
Hungary
At present the market is narrow in money terms but the company is not looking for big business in these developing markets yet. It believes that it needs to have a presence in the markets now to avoid losing out when things eventually do take off. GCOS 7 is to be used in a bank clearing system in China and Bull has just taken the first orders for two pilot projects for government administration systems in the Soviet Union, and has also just invested in Hungary’s Videoton to offer the DPS 7000 throughout Comecon countries (CI No 1,347). Even though there is not much money around, areas such as banking are recieving priority financing due to political pressure. For the DPS 7000/A turnkey prices range approximately from $80,000 to $400,000, including hardware and GCOS 7 software, preconfigured in the factory. The DPS 7000/500 and 700 families start at $2.5m, rising to about $8.5m.
