By William Fellows
In a month or so Hitachi Ltd will make public a roadmap with specific details of its future mainframe CPU plans. With sales of its bi-polar ECL Skyline mainframe dwindling rapidly, and sales of its plug-compatible CMOS Pilot series now meeting or exceeding Skyline revenue, Hitachi says it will converge the two architectures in the 2002 timeframe. Before that it will make available an enhanced version of its next-generation Skyline II Trinium, as well as the first of S/390-compatibles using its own CMOS CPU designs. Hitachi estimates that its Pilot series has between 14% and 15% of the CMOS market; Skyline now accounts for just a few percent of the mainframe market.
Instead of producing a mixed instruction bi-polar ECL/CMOS set architecture, Hitachi expects that ACE, its ECL chipset will be integrated into discreet areas of future system designs. It will be pressed into use to add value to Hitachi’s own CMOS mainframe chipset – which it says it has been working on for some time – especially in the area of I/O. Meantime, the chip giant, which has considerable experience with CMOS designs, says its own CMOS processors will provide lockstep functionality with IBM devices. It thinks its own designs will offer better price/performance than the equivalent IBM technology plus unique functionality.
IBM will cease OEMing new S/390 CPU designs to plug-compatible mainframe makers from the end of this year, though Hitachi says other parts of its S/390 license arrangements will stay in place, presumably including operating system and system software pieces. Hitachi has already said it will design and develop its own IBM- compatible CMOS CPUs, also manufactured in a copper process. It says it expects to be able to match each new turn of IBM future CMOS S/390 mainframe processor architecture with its own compatible implementations that will follow six to 12 months later beginning with Big Blue’s G7 CPUs due next summer. That puts Hitachi’s own G7-compatible systems out at around early to mid 2001. Hitachi says it also expects to be able to continue to sell IBM’s G6-series technology – which it announced today as its Pilot 9 series, see separate story – through the course of its lifetime, which means well beyond G7’s introduction.
Hitachi also hopes to use the introduction of its own CMOS designs to re-brand the Pilot series, while at the same time guaranteeing compatibility and seamless upgradability from current and future ‘IBM inside’ models. It says its own CMOS designs will also enable it to provide true technology upgrades from Pilot 9 models to the first systems using its own CMOS CPU chipsets. á
