IBM Corp and Compagnie des Machines Bull SA will launch their jointly developed Pegasus symmetric multiprocessing machines in late May or early June, running SMP AIX 4.1 – the first version of the IBM Unix operating system conforming to the PowerOpen specification, today’s edition of our sister paper Unigram.X reports. The three new machines are based on 75MHz PowerPC 601 chips, include IBM Micro Channel Architecture slots, and are being positioned as medium to high-end Unix servers. The entry-level box comes with one processor, but can be upgraded to four by slotting extra boards in. The dual-processor mid-range system can accommodate up to six PowerPCs and is claimed to perform up to 450 transactions per second. The high-end quad processor can also be expanded to six CPUs and will do an estimated 650 tps. But, customers don’t have to stick with the 601 chip should they prefer the 604, due to be announced in mid-March, as 604 and 601 boards are claimed to be interchangeable. Machines based on the PowerPC 604 are scheduled for launch at the end of the third quarter or start of the fourth, and users will be able to cluster these using High-Availability Clustering Multi-Processing software, which resides on top of AIX and was jointly developed by the firms as part of their OEM and technology deal.
