Hitachi announced the HITAC M-840 processor group of compact and mid-range mainframes in December 1991 and rolled them out in March 1992. This group featured Hitachi’s development of world-class 150,000-gate CMOS VLSIs and its multiprocessor technology. The M-840 models covered a four-fold performance range and were deployed as departmental computers in large corporations and as host computers suited for office environments in mid-sized businesses.
Hitachi’s FLORA computers and other vendors’ PCs could be used as terminals since the M-840 processor group used an industry standard LAN (CD10 series) and standard protocols (OSI, TCP/IP). This allowed users to easily search and modify databases from their familiar PC environment.
The computers blended in seamlessly with office environments because they only required a space the size of a newspaper (0.34 m2) and, without the need for any extra cooling equipment, they operated as silently as an art gallery (noise levels were 1/30 of previous Hitachi models).
| 10 | 20,30,40 | 50,60,70,80 | 90 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. of instruction processors | 1 | 2 | ||
| Main memory capacity [MB] | 16−48 | 16-64 | 32-256 | |
| Max. number of channels | 8 | 12 | 16 | |
