IBM Corp’s announcement tomorrow looks set to be the 3090 killer. Sources say that there will be an extended distance facility, available only on the Summit machines, using laser monomode fibre optic channels. Because of different fibre diameters, the range in the US will be 35 miles, but only 30 miles in the UK. The Summit machines will transfer data at 17Mbytes per second, while the rest will remain at 10Mb per second. As regards processors, there will be four new 9021s. The 740 is a three-way, the 660 is a two-way multiprocessor, the 640 is a dyadic and the 520 is a uniprocessor. The 9121 family, the air-cooled frame models, will be extended by a four-way multi-processor, the 610, a three-way multi-processor, the 570 and another two-way, the 490. There is speculation that IBM will announce a new mechanism for subsystems to define and control internal storage keys, again only on Summit models. This is something that CICS users have been crying out for since unlike IMS, different transactions may end up in the same address space and compromise system integrity. CICS looks to be a major player with security assuming a high profile: there is talk of CICS on multiple machines but managed from a single point of control. Shared expanded storage may feature, but if it does, it will have a long lead-time, unlike the processors. MVS will be enhanced and there will raft of software support for the new features and systems. However, anyone that acquired a 3090 or one of the transitional machines in the ES/9000 line in the past six months will be less than pleased with IBM since residual values will reflect the demise of the 370 architecture – but IBM may offer attractive trade-in terms so that it can avoid self-impact from used 3090s by trashing the things.
