With no mainframe or supercomputer offerings of its own, Toshiba Corp has been forming alliances with foreign firms to remain competitive with the Big Three of Fujitsu, NEC and Hitachi. Last year it signed an agreement with IBM Japan that allowed it to propose IBM’s full computer line to its customers, and it has now signed a similar agreement with Cray Japan to get into the supercomputer game. Under the agreement, Toshiba will integrate Cray supercomputers with smaller machines from Japanese manufacturers, in an effort likely to enhance Cray’s market share. Toshiba has already built a network around a Cray supercomputer in the academic city of Tsukuba, linking the big machine to different computers in nine research establishments via a high-speed local area network. Toshiba, which is also a major OEM customer of Sun Microsystems, will use its own computer-aided design system to develop specifications.
