There is a mound of confusion over what is happening in IBM’s mainframe world, and when the mythical Summit will appear forecasts vary from early next year (unlikely) to the middle of 1991 or even later (much more likely) – but there is one explanation that seems to fit the few known facts: a senior IBMer is on record as having said last summer that the 3090S machines are Summit, and although the remark was greeted at the time with scepticism there is a good case to be made for it – it looks as if IBM had planned one more kicker for the 3090E machines that would have speeded up the processor a bit, but would have been a relatively minor engineering change, and then Amdahl Corp spooked IBM by coming out with the 5990 line, which was substantially more powerful than IBM had expected; panicked, IBM junked the simple upgrade for the E and brought Summit forward to take its place and meet the Amdahl challenge with a machine that involves a complete processor swap-out to upgrade from the E – but the new chips were not quite ready, which explains the problems IBM has had at the installation of many S machines; following this line of reasoning through, there will be a kicker for the S machines just as soon as IBM is completely confident that the chips are really solid, and likely a further late life kicker ahead of the launch of the company’s next generation of processor technology.
