Everything else at IBM Corp was rather overshadowed on Tuesday by its announcement of the end of the world as its employees know it – and in effect, the death of the mainframe, but the company did also make a couple of significant product announcements, notably Release 2 of AIX/ESA mainframe Unix Version 2, built on the Open Software Foundation’s OSF/1 Release 1.1 with additional IBM enhancements to exploit large processor capabilities. AIX/ESA Release 2 adds support of file systems greater than 2Gb – the limit is now 500Gb, and Data Striping on disk subsystems for faster access. Release 2 also provides performance improvements through an enhanced Virtual Memory Manager and asynchronous input-output using the AIX/ESA Communications Server, which is claimed to enhanceusability and performance for those connected to it via a channel or local network-attached RS/6000. This support enables terminals connected to asynchronous ports on the RS/6000 to operate as if they were directly connected to the AIX/ESA system. The RS/6000 combines input from multiple terminals and collects complete lines entered at terminals used with line-mode applications before sending the input to AIX/ESA, reducing interrupts and load on the AIX/ESA system. Virtual terminal support that supports remote logins to AIX/ESA with Telnet and rlogin commands, is now done on the RS/6000. Data encryption is provided by the crypt feature built within a library called libcrypt. The libcrypt library is available as a feature which encompasses the full function Data Encryption Standard and is generally controlled by the US State Department, which means that if you don’t speak convincing American, you can’t have it. The implementation of asynchronous input-output is based on Posix 1003.4/D 12 Real Time Extensions, dated February 1992. It preserves the order of multiple asynchronous input-output requests issued against a particular file. Being compliant with OSF/1 1.1, it is by definition also compliant with the Unix System V Interface Definition Issue 3 – Base. It is also Berkeley Software Distribution 4.3-compliant. IBM notes that it announced intent in September to make AIX/ESA source code available as a separately orderable option. This offering will enable customers to extend and tailor their systems to meet unique requirements. It now intends to make the source available in the second quarter of next year as separately orderable options for IBM AIX/ESA 2.2 and Network File System for AIX/ESA 2.1.1. AIX/ESA 2.2, available in February, requires a minimum of 32Mb of memory to run, and 36Mb to install it. The graduated one-time charge ranges from $63,120 on a low-end 9221 machine to $1.3m on a six-processor 9021. It also announced IBM AIXwindows Environment/ESA 1.2 X Window implementation for the new release; it is based on X Window System version 11.5, and OSF/Motif Version 1.1.4.
