Just months after Amdahl Corp launched versions of the Fujitsu Ltd M-760 mid-range mainframes as IBM-compatible Unix-only machines, Fujitsu has replaced the M-760 line with an eight-model M-770 line in Japan – and Amdahl will presumably move over to the new line too. The M-770 series offers only a 25% increase in performance over its predecessor: covering the IBM 4381 and low-end 3090 models, it offers a 13 to one field-upgradable performance range within the line. The M-770 effectively Fujitsu’s prequel to IBM’s 4391, also uses the EXA expanded architecture announced in June last year to implement higher performance, and various new devices are supported such as Fibre Distributed Data Interface 100M-bps local area networks, and support on ISDN networks. The mid-range OSIV/X8 operating system – something between DOS/VSE and IBM’s old OS/VS-1, has also been upgraded, with support for the RDB II high- performance relational database and for Fujitsu’s TISP communications software for linking with Unix workstations. Fujitsu’s VTAM-G version 30 is claimed to enable unlimited linking of workstations and other computers. Models 2, 4 and 6 of the M-770 series come with 32Kb cache per processor, 32Mb to 96Mb main memory, a maximum of 12 channels, and a maximum aggrefate data rate of 33Mbytes-per-second. Models 8, 10, 20, 30 and 40 have 48Kb cache per processor and 32Mb to 256Mb of main memory in the 8 to 20, 64Mb to 512Mb in the Models 30 and 40; the bigger models also take up to 1Gb of expanded storage and aggregate data rate of 117Mbytes per second for uniprocessors from 32 channels, 234Mbps from 64 chann els for dyadics. Operating systems supported include MSP-EX, MSP E20, FSP E26/E20, ESPIII UTS/M – the Am dahl UTS Unix; AVM/EX and AVM/EF V01 answers to IBM’s VM. Prices of range from $27,700 per month for the M-770/2 to $201,290 for the M- 770/40. Fujitsu looks to sell 3,000 over the next four years.
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