In the AS/400 world, IBM Corp’s top priority has to be to raise users’ sense of comfort and security to the maximum, so the company has to be rather more open about its plans than it would ideally like. Accordingly it has confirmed to us, following a report in the latest edition of The Four Hundred newsletter, the company’s road map for AS/400 processor technology, which shows that in September, IBM will wind the clock on the A30 chip set up to 182MHz from the current 154MHz in the 530s, but whatever you may have heard, don’t look for anything bigger than a four-way. Then, in the third quarter of next year, IBM will announce 9406 machines that use Apache, a single chip implementation of the PowerPC AS processor – which currently requires seven chips. The Apaches, supporting both AS/400 and Unix memory addressing schemes, will also be used in the RS/6000 workstations and servers. The biggest 9406 IBM expects to announce in 1997 will use eight Apaches. In 1998, IBM will still be using the Apache chips, but the high-end machine will be 12-way instead of eight- way. They will need OS/400 version 4 for N-way multiprocessing, and gossips say that v4 contains a true Unix kernel, which will make IBM’s software development efforts – especially in the Internet-intranet areas – a whole lot easier. And in third quarter 1999, IBM plans a super PowerPC AS chip, likely to be using elements of IBM’s forthcoming PowerPC 630 as well as other advanced PowerPC technology. Code-named Northstar, it will be designed from the ground up as a unique member of the PowerPC family, although it is unclear whether or not IBM will use Northstar in RS/6000s. The fastest Northstar uniprocessors will run at 250MHz.
