IBM Corp is said to be talking about a four-way PowerPC 620 symmetric multiprocessor in its RS/6000 Unix family, which launch pencilled in for early next year. Drawing on the software work that Comgnie des Machines Bull SA is contributing, it would have two processors to a board and shared memory. It believes that the thing could do 2,000 TPC-A transactions per second. IBM thinking seems to be that symmetric multiprocessing could go up to a six-way machines, thereafter going to PowerPC clusters from eight to 32 CPUs. After that the Rios 2-based Power Parallel line takes over.
