IBM yesterday unveiled two new models in its RISC System/6000 family of Unix workstations and servers, a second X Window terminal, a graphics unit and additional storage capacity – as well as dropping prices on existing RS/6000 hardware, but raising software tags. At the low-end, the Powerstation 320H – H for high performance, but for obvious reasons, no P – uses a 25MHz iteration of the Rios RISC, while the high-end Powerserver 950 is a rack-mounted version of the 41.6MHz model 550 launched at last year’s Unix Expo show in November. The model 320H, at 37 MIPS and 11.7 MFLOPS carries a Specmark of 32.4, comes with from 16Mb to 128Mb memory, 160Mb disk and starts at UKP8,163 with ships due in May. Users of the current low-end model 320, which runs at 20MHz, can upgrade from June at a price of UKP2,721. The model 950, rated at 62 MIPS, 25.2 MFLOPS and Specmarked at 56.3, comes with from 32Mb to 512Mb RAM, 857Mb disk and is due in July with prices starting at UKP108,626. Existing users of the rack-mounted model 930 can upgrade in September for UKP64,095. They’ll run the latest 3.1.5 version of IBM’s AIX Unixalike, due in April. The Powergraphics 7235 GTO unit delivers 990,000 three-dimensional vectors per second performance to workstations in the RS/6000 series, a tenfold improvement, said to match the power of the existing dedicated graphics system, the model 730, which incorporates technology from Silicon Graphics Inc. It supports the PHIGS graphics language, X Window and applications written for Silicon Graphics’ Iris GL environment. An 8-bit model with 256 colours costs UKP12,700 – a 24-bit version comes in at UKP19,211 with 16.7m colours, both are due in September. The X-Station 130 uses a 32MHz processor, has 2.5Mb RAM, 1Mb video memory and costs UKP1,555 from the second quarter. The 9334 model 500 expans ion unit offers up to 3.4Gb disk on RS/6000 workstations and servers. Available by the year-end, it starts at UKP7,327. The 9334 model 010 expansion unit provides the rack- mount models 930 and 950 with up to 22.2Gb disk capacity – a 670Mb version costs UKP6,600 – the 7202 expansion rack is priced at UKP4,000, both are due in October. IBM also announced support for Minneapolis firm Network Systems Corp’s eight-port DX/IP op tical data exchange router which enables RS/6000s to connect with AS/400s and other IBM systems – it costs UKP12,700. Prices of existing RS/6000 models are cut by between 10% and 33%, with software tags rising 5% for systems supporting up to 32 users and 10% for the rest. IBM did not confirm or deny that Barclays Bank Plc is set to become the largest AIX user in Europe with orders for up to 3,000 RS/6000 machines, though it admitted that several large situations are near completion. IBM UK’s AIX Sys tems Manager David McKenzie claims the company now has the largest share of the multi-user commercial Unix in the UK, but then declined to reveal the findings of the internal study said to prove this finding.
