The general reaction to Hitachi Ltd’s new mainframe offerings seems to be favourable with a few reservations: if the clock speed really is 8nS then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect a faster machine – but the amount of power wasted when another processor is added to the system is high – it appears that the gain is 0.81 for each new processor added against 0.88 for IBM and Amdahl; the physical characteristics of the new machines are somewhat daunting, with the four processor EX 420 taking up 256 square feet against 228 for the IBM 3090-600J and 195 for the Amdahl 5990-1400; power consumption is also heavy – 134 KVA for the EX 420 against 91.7 KVA for the IBM box and only 61.6 KVA for the Amdahl; some commentators are suggesting that Hitachi is biding its time until IBM brings out a quadratic processor, when it will be able to exploit the hidden power of the latest EX models and offer eight processor dual-quadratic models.
