Gimmick, or answer to a real need? Or perhaps a way to persuade people waiting for IBM Corp’s faster CMOS processor in September not to wait but to go compatible instead? Amdahl Corp yesterday said it is packaging two eight-processor IBMulators in its Millennium CMOS line in the same box. The Millennium Global Servers and Millennium Coupling Servers are claimed to result in significant economies of scale in environmental costs for enterprises with large computing workloads. Amdahl claims that, using its CMOS Admiral processor, which it rates at 45 MIPS, users can have up to 600 MIPS in a single Millennium footprint, creating various combinations of up to 16 processors across two internal systems. The machines have a Level 1 cache of 256Kb per CPU and Level 2 cache of 8Mb per CPU, for total cache capacity 15 to 21 times greater than from any other vendor. Amdahl was the first company to allow users to unslug their machines and pay for the extra power only while the slug was out, and similar facilities are offered on the Millennia. New QuickAvailability features include QuickCapacity for rapid and easy addition of extra processing capacity to meet unexpected demand, and QuickSwitch, to substitute an unused processor for a processor needing repair, to minimize down-time. Amdahl has also enhanced its QuickChannels feature so customers can add large groups of channels while the system continues to run. The Amdahl Multiple Domain Feature enables up to 10 domains to run concurrently. Shipments of Millennium Global Servers start next quarter, Millennium Coupling Servers will follow in the first quarter next year.
