''VAX'' Killer was a marketing phrase used to describe two of '' IBM'''s families of computers that were competing with

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...

VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The VA ...

line of

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

s. Neither of IBM's families was compatible with the other. By contrast, ''VAX'' computers, manufactured by DEC, then the second largest company in the industry, were compatible with one another. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote that IBM "appears to be slaying precious few Vaxes." ''

Computerworld ''Computerworld'' (abbreviated as CW) is an ongoing decades old professional publication which in 2014 "went digital." Its audience is information technology (IT) and business technology professionals, and is available via a publication website ...

'' reported in January 1988 that IBM was "backing away from" using the term. At that point, one product line was clearly not killing ''VAXen'' and the other hadn't yet had a chance at doing so. Eight months later another periodical wrote: "IBM has been busy this year protecting itself with one VAX killer after another."

History

IBM's

9370 Year 937 ( CMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * A Hungarian army invades Burgundy, and burns the city of Tournus. Then they go southward ...

was a smaller mainframe, compatible with larger IBM 370 mainframes. IBM's

AS/400 The IBM AS/400 (Application System/400) is a family of midrange computers from IBM announced in June 1988 and released in August 1988. It was the successor to the System/36 and System/38 platforms, and ran the OS/400 operating system. Lower-cost ...

, also known as ''Silverlake'', merged two similar-with-one-another families of computers, the

System/36 The IBM System/36 (often abbreviated as S/36) was a midrange computer marketed by IBM from 1983 to 2000 - a multi-user, multi-tasking successor to the System/34. Like the System/34 and the older System/32, the System/36 was primarily progr ...

and the System/38. The result was DEC had one compatible family, whereas IBM had two incompatible families: one a mainframe-compatible system, the other a mid-range system. At the time, IBM's mid-range market share was not more than 17 percent; DEC's was double. The IBM 9370 was a low-end system announced October 7, 1986, and it met its two design goals: to be compatible with larger IBM 370s, and to be "small enough and quiet enough to operate in an office environment." It failed with the bolted-on third goal of being a VAX-killer. As for the second line of VAX-killers, ''

The Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'' quoted a major research firm's summary: "The Silverlake products should help IBM cover for the disaster of the 9370." One move DEC made to counter the 9370's going small was to go even smaller, by introducing two additional models to its line of MicroVAX systems. Work on the second ''VAX Killer'' concept began earlier than the 9370, but the AS/400's designer said "I never saw it as a VAX killer." A 2020 lookback at the development of the Data General minicomputer described in Tracy Kidder's

The Soul of a New Machine ''The Soul of a New Machine'' is a non-fiction book written by Tracy Kidder and published in 1981. It chronicles the experiences of a computer engineering team racing to design a next-generation computer at a blistering pace under tremendous p ...

notes that it was really Data General's second try at building a "VAX Killer." An earlier look at the phrase had DEC's VAX/VMS as the ''

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

killer'': VMS replacing parts of IBM/Unisys/HP shops where, one writer claimed, ''Unix'' might otherwise have entered.

References

{{authority control DEC minicomputers History of computing hardware History of software IBM minicomputers Marketing