IBM Corp, hoping to breathe new life and a sexier image into its decade-old proprietary AS/400 minicomputers, has fitted the line with new internet and data warehouse capabilities, improved performance by up to five times over existing models and slashed prices. As Computergram first predicted (CI No 3,207), the company has introduced eight new systems which are priced from $8,500 to over $1.2m and can be configured with up to 12 of the new 64-bit Apache PowerPC RISCs which are also to feature in new RS/6000s (not featured in yesterday’s rollout). In the event IBM couldn’t steel itself to come up with anything more adventurous than AS/400e for the re-launched (its words) systems targeted at electronic commerce it hopes will reverse a recent decline in revenue from sales of the line. It’s putting a reported $90m into a new advertising campaign directed at senior business managers touting the new features. AS/400 sales supposedly accounted for nearly $11bn of Big Blue’s $75.95bn 1996 revenue, but for the couple of last quarters has joined PCs and its RS/6000 Unix cousins on the sick list (CI No 3,208). Although the new systems are available immediately, native implementations of Lotus Domino and Java won’t be generally available on them until next February. The Domino Notes-based web server currently runs on the AS/400’s Integrated PC Server (IPCS) card, a 166MHz PC on a board, which some will better remember as the FSIOP (file server integrated I/O processor). At that time the IPCS card will also support Windows NT, on which will run internet firewall software which has been ported over from AIX Unix. The combination of a new processor, new memory subsystem and a new release 4.1 of the OS/400 operating system mean the AS/400e can support up to 20Gb RAM (from 4Gb on existing models), 996Gb disk and 100Mbit Ethernet. IBM’s also abandoned user-based pricing for the line – OS/400 4.1, including new internet security and Net.Data web macro processing, is integrated. The Apache A35 single-chip implementation of the 64-bit PowerPC AS RISC is an all-CMOS device, previous models use the bi-CMOS, seven-chip Musky design. It processes three instructions per cycle and has 1.7 million circuits. Some versions of the 125MHz A35 – different versions are supported in different models – can be configured with up to 4Mb L2 cache. It includes 64Kb on-chip data and instruction cache. As many as 32 AS/400e systems can be clustered together. Although OS/400 4.1 includes many new enhancements for use as an internet server, and the system performs a claimed 25,000 TPC-C transactions per minute compared with 5,000 for the existing line, one of the longest-running failures of the box is its poor support for third-party relational databases. Until IBM solves that problem not one dollar of the proposed $90m ad campaign will enable users to truly compare like with like, as in which platform – Unix, NT or AS/400 – would be the best host for their mission-critical Oracle solution. Boosting the AS/400 with standard PowerPC processors, integrated web server, e-commerce and Java software is a step in the right direction, but may still leave the new e-commerce friendly AS/400 only half-way to the Promised Land. Fully-configured AS/400e 9406 systems including OS/400 cost from $13,000 for the model 600-2129 through $480,000 for the two-way 620-2182 to $1.25m for the 12-way 650-2243. 9406 servers start at $8,500 for the S10-2118 rising to $70,000 for the S20-2165 two-way to $300,000 for the S40-221.
