Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG likes to shadow IBM Corp mainframe announcements in its own similar but incompatible line as closely as possible, and the company has rushed out a new eight-way machine or Octoprocessor, the 7.500 H130-T, which runs the company’s proprietary flagship operating system, now called BS2000/OSD. That OSD is ironic because it stands for Open Systems Direction, where a decade ago, Siemens was making a commitment to make BS2000 more MVS-like, so as to be able to support MVS applications with little modification. The H130-T, using a specially microcoded processor from Fujitsu Ltd, is claimed to offer up to 26% better performance than the H130P, which previously topped the line. It is rated at almost six times the H130-A uniprocessor, which means that all the system software eats up the equivalent of more than two processors when you stick eight CPUs together. Main memory goes to 2Gb, global storage to 8Gb. It takes up to 128 channels for aggregate data rate of 1G-byte per second, and fibre optic cabling supports peripherals up to a mile away from the processor when channel units with four Type 2 channels are used. A new Data in Virtual feature provides rapid access to unstructured files by defining a window in virtual address space, facilitating creation of applications that require to handle large volumes of data quickly. It did not give any indication of price, but then IBM has torn up the price list, and Siemens does like to stay in lock-step…
