Underlining the way in which powerful and cheap RISC-based Unix systems are threatening to chip away at IBM’s 370-type mainframe base, AMR Corp’s American Airlines Decision Technologies has converted the airline’s commercial crew scheduling software, which had been running on an IBM 3090, for the MIPS Computer Systems Inc RISC-based R-series family. According to Computer Systems News, the airline has been using the MIPS version of the software to schedule its crews since last October, and the system is now being offered to other airlines on a turnkey basis. The turnkey system consists of an 18 MIPS RC3240 server supporting 12 MIPS RS2030 workstations. The airline says that the new system reduces the time to obtain results to six hours from 24 hours, has resulted in a Motif-based interface that makes it easier to use, freed the 3090 for other work, and should lead to computing cost savings of from $3.3m and $5m over five years. The MIPS machines were chosen because a PL/I compiler is available for them. The Trip system is already used by 10 other airlines, all now prime targets for the new system, and all potentially representing 3090 MIPS that IBM won’t now be able to pop.
