The proprietary fault-tolerant system that was promised by Fujitsu Ltd (CI No 1,400) turns out to be a duplex version of what it regards as its answer to the DEC VAX – the A-series minicomputer built by its PFU Ltd – PanaFacom Ussac – joint venture with Matushita Electric Industrial Co and Uchida Toko Co. The A series machines are built of 300-gate-per-chip ECL and 20,000 gate-per-chip CMOS and run SX/UTS Unix – derived no doubt from the Amdahl Corp UTS, and an SX/UR real-time variant, as well as the OSIV/S from Fujitsu’s mid-range 4300-class M-series machines (CI No 685). The machines are aimed more at the design, scientific, factory automation and technical markets than at business, and the new fault-tolerant model is the A-80HR, which is just like DEC’s new fault-tolerant VAX offering, coming with two processors and mirrored. The new model takes up only a third of the space of two A-series machines and costs two thirds the price of two machines – A-series boxes range in price from about $20,000 to $850,000. It is being pitched at computer-integrated manufacturing and retail distribution networks. Fujitsu has also developed a revised version of its COMS Corporate Network Management System. The COMS-C version for the A-Series can manage disparate networks of heterogeneous machines, and a COMS-I version is avaiilable for the M-series mainframes, handling networks of office computers and personal computers. It includes real-time monitoring functions for terminal response and usage of network devices. A gateway application programming interface enables multi-vendor networks to be managed; an operations management programming interface supports flexible network management, and customers can write their own extensions too, in Cobol.
