Although its wide-ranging agreement with IBM Corp for the PowerPC was signed in May (CI No 2,421), Hitachi Ltd still has not settled its microprocessor strategy internally, according to company sources. The most visible manifestation is the lack of an expected statement of direction from Hitachi about how it will move the PowerPC agreement forward in new products, and there is no word yet on whether it will be taking IBM’s SP2 PowerParallels OEM. Because the Japanese company has not fully resolved the relationship between its PowerPC future and its already in-place Hewlett-Packard Co Precision Architecture RISC strategy, it has not been able to decide exactly how and when it will introduce its own PowerPC server technologies, and, therefore, how it could or should position SP2s in relation to its current products. The assumption has been that SP2s will be available from Hitachi, because of the option included in the original agreement, Hitachi says. It is been evaluating SP2s out in Japan. It seems the pieces of the strategy will be put to Hitachi managers for approval sometime this month, with a statement of direction – promised to be significantly different from the original agreement – to follow later on this quarter.
