IBM Corp reckons that, as reported, its new RS/6000 Model 970 achieves a SPECmark rating of 100.3, making IBM the first to produce a RISC system to score a century on the benchmark, and that it also does 100.9 transactions per second on the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s TPC-A benchmark: the machine is being pitched at banks and telephone companies; it also said it plans to make available ruggedised versions of the 340 and 350 systems and servers; and that it cut prices 17% on the Powerserver 950, and 14% on the 400Mb disk drive for the RS/6000.
