The appearance of the Peripheral Component Interconnect-based RS/6000 Model 40P marks the final chapter for the once strategic Micro Channel Architecture. IBM Corp’s RS/6000 division now admits there is no technical reason why Peripheral Component Interconnect cannot do the job right up into the high end machines. Furthermore, IBMers who spoke to sister publication Unigram.X at Uniforum said that Micro Channel Architecture will gradually be relegated to a peripheral role within the machine, with Peripheral Component Interconnect taking over as the main system bus. As surmised (CI No 2,511), the first phase of the transition will take place over the next year as IBM introduces boxes with a dual Micro Channel Architecture/Peripheral Component Interconnect bus structure. These will enable users to hang onto their existing plug-in expansion boards. The future RS/6000s should be PowerPC Reference Platform-compliant and therefore notionally capable of running other operating systems. However, the RS/6000 division remains firmly wedded, or perhaps welded, to AIX.
