Behind the schizophrenic decision at Hitachi Ltd to adopt the PowerPC RISC for some of its lines just as it had mastered its Hewlett-Packard Co Precision Architecture RISC strategy lies a bout of mortal combat in Japan for control of the company’s future microprocessor direction – and nothing said by anyone in Hitachi’s foreign outposts is likely to have any effect on the outcome, our sister paper Unigram.X hears. Although Hitachi Ltd, Hitachi Europe and other units are already shipping a parallel SR2001 system based on Precision Architecture for the technical market, the so-called HMPP 1 is comprised of technology for the most part built and supplied by Hewlett-Packard, including the chips and HI-UX/MPP operating system. A second generation HMPP 2 due in two or three years running Hitachi’s OSF/1 is the machine seen as a commercial beast. In the meantime, the US Hitachi Data Systems Inc unit of Hitachi Data Systems Corp, where Electronic Data Systems Corp has a 20% stake, has decided it can’t wait that long and will be offering rebadged Sequent Computer Systems Inc Symmetrys to bridge the gap. Although Maidenhead, Berkshire-based Hitachi Data Europe, which is the operating unit of Hitachi Data Corp’s other division, Hitachi Data Holdings BV in the Netherlands, usually shadows its Santa Clara, California-based cousin’s footsteps, in this instance it doesn’t believe there is enough demand to warrant a similar local arrangement with Sequent and is therefore content to wait for the Hitachi box. However, quite what that will turn out to be remains unclear. As well as the Precision Architecture RISC road, under the agreement with IBM Corp, Hitachi has rights to IBM’s SP2 parallel line, plus the option to do its own parallel PowerPC machines; as well as a host of other things. A decision on this is expected sometime around Christmas, the company promises. If Hitachi, and subsequently Hitachi Data Europe, do end up taking SP2s, it will take them complete with AIX until parallel hardware running its Osiris mix of OSF/1 and other commercial Unix system software is delivered. Hitachi Data Europe’s plans are presently somewhat clouded by its need to put in place a new distribution plan that its US sibling has already delineated. Hitachi Data Europe’s biggest reseller is of course BASF AG-owned Comparex Informationssyteme GmbH. Until now a strictly mainframe operating system only house, Comparex is expected to announce in October that it will offer Hitachi’s IBMulators running the Osiris Unix mix. Osiris now offers support for Oracle, and although Informix and Micro Focus Cobol are coming, much more is in the works for Osiris. Hitachi Data’s Boston group is working on Distributed Computing Enviornment Motif and DME elements are coming. Hitachi Data European distributors include Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA in Italy; Comparex handles Germany, Spain, Austria, Eastern Europe and other countries Hitachi Data doesn’t reach.
