【Fujitsu】FUJITSU GRANPOWER 6000 Series

The GRANPOWER 6000 series of office computers was Fujitsu’s successor to the K-6000α series. Fujitsu announced the series in May 1997 as a new series of business servers with dramatically improved cost effectiveness and better support for network computing. While carrying forward all assets of the K office computer series, the GRANPOWER 6000 series took a new direction by equipping three of the four models with Intel processors. From 1997 on, Fujitsu repositioned all its mid-range network computing servers under the GRANPOWER brand.*1

Features of the GRANPOWER 6000 series:

(1) Up to 3.5 times more cost effective (Fujitsu’s own comparison)
Fujitsu achieved an average cost effectiveness improvement of 250 percent, and even 350 percent with some models, by using Intel Pentium Pro processors in the entry-level and mid-range models (300, 500, and 700) and a 64-bit RISC*2 processor in the top model (900).
(2) Support for network computing
Fujitsu made several software upgrades to improve Internet and network support, such as adding support for Java*3 and CORBA,*4 the latest distributed system technology at the time.
(3) Full backward compatibility with K series assets
To get around processor incompatibilities caused by the adoption of Pentium Pro processors, Fujitsu supplied a microkernel*5 to run K series applications at the binary level.
*1. Fujitsu segmented the GRANPOWER brand as follows: GRANPOWER 5000: PC servers; GRANPOWER 6000: office computers; GRANPOWER 7000: UNIX servers.
*2. RISC: Reduced instruction set computer.
*3. Java: A programming language developed by Sun Microsystems that was simple, object oriented, and platform independent. It is well suited for use in networking environments.
*4. CORBA: Common object request broker architecture. A standard defining an architecture and related technologies for object-oriented distributed systems.
*5. Microkernel: Software responsible for extremely low-level functions at a level below the operating system.
Specifications of the GRANPOWER 6000 series
Model name 300 500 700 900
Type I/II I/II/III I/II/III I/II/III/IV
Introduced May 1997
CPU 200 MHz Pentium Pro 64-bit RISC*2 processor
No. of CPUs 1 1 − 2 1 − 4 1 − 4
Main memory capacity 32MB −
128MB
64MB −
256MB
256MB − 512MB
Disk capacity 2GB − 40GB 2GB − 50GB 8GB − 268.6GB 8GB − 292.4GB
Operating system ASP V10
Other details
  • Used Intel processors in the 300, 500, and 700 models
  • All models, even Intel models, guaranteed to run existing K series applications
  • Continued the disk mirroring and UPS standard equipment from the K-6000 series

The specifications above were correct at the time the products were announced. Some specifications were later revised due to product upgrades


FUJITSU GRANPOWER 6000/300FUJITSU GRANPOWER 6000/900 type I/IIFUJITSU GRANPOWER 6000/900 type III/IV