At Amdahl Corp’s Unix briefing in Brussels last week, Graham Goldfarb, its European marketing manager for Unix was once again asking the question, how long will Amdahl remain the only mainframe manufacturer offering a native Unix? The answer to his own question is – and one he reiterates every year – probably no more than another 12 months. He argues that, political reasons apart, IBM is running into the same technical difficulties trying to bring AIX on to the 370s in a native mode as Amdahl experienced in the early 1989s when it was doing development on its System V-compatible UTS operating system, and that IBM has spread the project too widely around the company. As far as Amdahl’s own plans are concerned, Goldfarb expects UTS version 2.1 to emerge later this year, incorporating among other things enhanced security, X Window, OSI protocols, four-way multi-processing and expanded function types. Amdahl’s Unix variant is being developed jointly with AT&T Co, and release 3.0 of UTS, which will be compatible with System V.4.1, is expected sometime in 1992, though on IBM compatibility Amdahl says that it will never have a full SNA suite running under UTS. On the hardware side Goldfarb says the firm is developing a server that will support in excess of 5,000 Sun Microsystems workstations, and that an announcement will be made some time this year. However he was not so forthcoming on the European availability of its first Unix-only 370-type mainframe, the 7300 series. He said that as the system was a risk to the company it would be extensively tested in the US – several installations have been made – before the thing is released on the European market.
