Amdahl Europe forgot to mention it, but its Sunnyvale parent has also announced support for IBM’s Transaction Processing Facility on its 5890 and 5990 IBMulators, and an enhancement to its Multiple Domain Feature hardware partitioning system that adds Dynamic Storage Reconfiguration. TPF is the monitor for transaction-intensive operations that IBM pulled out of the Airline […]
Amdahl Europe forgot to mention it, but its Sunnyvale parent has also announced support for IBM’s Transaction Processing Facility on its 5890 and 5990 IBMulators, and an enhancement to its Multiple Domain Feature hardware partitioning system that adds Dynamic Storage Reconfiguration. TPF is the monitor for transaction-intensive operations that IBM pulled out of the Airline Control Program and was privately telling users was strategic for the future as long ago as October 1984 (CI No 46). Amdahl had been planning to offer its own proprietary Aspen operating system for transaction-intensive work but abandoned it about a year ago in favour of Unix. The move on Multiple Domain Feature is Amdahl cocking a snook at IBM’s PR/SM announcement on Tuesday (CI No 1,029): the facility enables reallocation of processor storage from one domain to another without disrupting operations, something not possible with competitive systems and is in addition to the facilities to redirect channels and CPU power between domains. The facility, and TPF support, are available now, and Amdahl will offer support for unattended operations – compatible with IBM’s ISCF/PC and NetView and providing a full-screen interface to ISCF – on the 5890 and 5990 series in March and April 1989 respectively, all three enhancements at no charge.
