One way and another, mainframes may now account for less than 50% of ICL’s total turnover but the new Essex – spell it SX now the machines are out – represent a triumph of British development and engineering, albeit exploiting Japanese technology: point is that ICL appears to be exploiting Fujitsu’s technology rather better than Amdahl Corp if its MIPS ratings are to be believed, because although the new SX CPU is clocked at 12nS where Amdahl’s 5990 CPU ticks over at 10.8nS, ICL reckons its getting 47 MIPS out of its CPU, a little more than Amdahl, but crams the CPU into far fewer cubic feet – much of that of course is the Godawfulness of the 370 architecture that Amdahl somehow has to get to grips with.
