COMPUTERS: Main Event: Japan vs. IBM

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) Just a few years ago, IBM dominated its Japanese rivals so completely that Tokyo experts quipped, "When IBM sneezes, Japanese computer makers are blown away." No longer. Last week Fujitsu, Japan's largest computer company, unveiled what it called the highest-performance general-purpose computer in the world. The timing of the announcement stole thunder from IBM, which the next day introduced its own new generation of mainframe machines. IBM touted the new computers as its most important roll-out in 25 years.

The head-to-head battle pits IBM's reputation for reliability against the raw number-crunching power of the Fujitsu machines. Fujitsu said its largest new computer can perform up to 600 million instructions per second, vs. an estimated 210 MIPS for IBM. But U.S. experts noted that corporations tend to be more interested in access to a wide range of software -- a traditional strong point of IBM systems -- than in high speeds.