We floated the jolly theory that the IBM 3090S is Summit back in June (CI No 1,208), pointing out that IBMers had actually said it was (why do you suppose it’s called S? was the quote), and that other IBMers had said last summer that there would be at least one more kicker for the 3090s, and it seems Gartner Group Inc was coming up with the same theory at the same time: in its July notes, it sees a 3090 G around year-end, adding everything Summity that was not included in the S, with the new successor to the 3090s appearing in mid-1991, initially with three and six CPU models for delivery in the second half of 1992; an interesting new factor that Gartner tosses into the pot is that as well as 16M-bit memory chips (so that users have to ditch their existing memory), which should be ready around then, the new machines will be built in the up-and-coming hybrid BiCMOS technology, which uses ECL or another bipolar technology for the most speed critical functions on the chip, and reduces overall power consumption by using CMOS for the rest of each circuit; Gartner looks for 10,000 gate BiCMOS arrays and an 8nS processor cycle with the uniprocessor delivering 50 MIPS, and suggests a second layer of clustering over multiprocessors, with up to 16 systems virtually coupled to create a single image system, with 3090s and the new machines – Gartner harks back to the early 1970s for the name Future System – perhaps able to be mixed in these clusters; a maximum eight processors in a system is forecast.
