On Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:38:28 -0600, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote: > >part of the reason that Amdahl was able to (initially) move into the >highend (in the mid to late 70s) was that the company had taken a >side-trip into Future System project (which was going to replace all >370s ... and be as radically different from 370 ... as 360 had been >different from the machines that had gone before it).
Amdahl was successful in the high end market because it developed processors using high speed Emitter-Coupled Logic. Dr. Amdahl had approached upper management at IBM before he left IBM and tried to convince them to produce such a computer. IBM said that it wouldn't be profitable. Part of the reason they thought it wouldn't be profitable was that in order to place it on the (liner) price/performance curve, IBM would have to charge about $10 million for the machine, and at that price there would not be enough buyers to offset the development cost. Dr. Amdahl pointed out that they could make a nice profit at a $4 million price point. IBM was not about to price a high end processor so inexpensively. -- Tom Marchant ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
