Fujitsu Ltd claims to have topped the 1,000 MIPS barrier with the most powerful addition to its GS8000 mainframe range – catching up with IBM which boasted that its S/390 G5 Parallel Enterprise Server had passed the billion MIPS barrier in July 1998. The new models bear more than a passing resemblance to the Millennium 800 Series, announced by its Amdahl subsidiary in October 1998, which boasted speeds of around 1,075 MIPS. Six new high-end models have been added to Fujitsu’s range, using 0.22 micron CMOS technology that Fujitsu says boosts speeds by 1.5 times those used in its current systems. The top of the range model, priced at around $1m, uses a Tightly Coupled Multi-Processor TCMP configuration of 12 CPUs to reach the billion MIPS mark. Fujitsu says the new models provide multi-cluster support for up to 16 clusters – twice the current limit – and also double to four the number of system storage units that can be accommodated.
