IBM Corp has come out with a couple of new Power2-based RS/6000s this week, aiming the Model 591 at numeric-intensive applications and billing the R21 as the most powerful rack-mountable server in the line. Both use a new 77MHz Power2 processor, which IBM helpfully points out translates to a 13nS machine cycle – as fast as the 3090 generation of mainframes and both come with 64Mb memory that can go all the way to 2Gb, and a quad-speed CD-ROM drive. The 591 can be configured in a high-availability clustered system with AIX 3.2.5, and is available as an upgrade for installed Model 500 machines. The Power2 processor incorporates a dual floating-point unit, quad-word memory system, a 256Kb data cache, and a memory bus wide enough to move large blocks of data. The Model 591 is available on August 18, upgrades from other 500s from September 8. It costs $57,500 plus $575 a month maintenance. Upgrades cost from $20,000 for a 590 to $37,500 from smaller 500 series machines. The R21 server comes with 128Mb to 2Gb memory, 1.1Gb disk and can be clustered.It costs from $64,500 plus $645 a month maintenance, $35,000 to upgrade from an R10, $20,000 from an R20; dates as for the 591.The company also announced the first support for Serial Storage Architecture disks on the RS/6000 with launch of the SSA 4-Port Adaptor, which streams data at 40M-bytes or 80M-bytes per second and costs $1,370 from August 11. Disks to go with it are the IBM 7133 SSA Disk Subsystem Model 010 for rack-mounting, and the Model 500 free-standing tower; they each take up to 16 disks, and disks are available in 1.1Gb, 2.2Gb and 4.5Gb capacities. The 010 is $17,500 with four 2.2Gb, $72,300 with 16 4.5Gb disks; and the Model 500 is $18,000 to $72,800 in the same capacities.
