IBM Corp has been promising a multi-processing addition to its RS/6000 line for some time, so it’s not too surprising that we hear it will announce one in around six weeks for delivery later in the year, says today’s edition of our sister publication Unigram.X. Unigram hears that it comes with four Rios RISC processors, 2Gb RAM, 6Gb or more disk, 2Gb per second fibre optic channel input-output and will perform at 400 MFLOPS. Its price tag is said to be in the low $200,000 range. Although Groupe Bull SA is intended to be handling RS/6000 multiprocessing under its accord with IBM (CI No 1,936), it seems doubtful the French are making much of an impact on this particular machine. The system will likely be the first in a series of RS/6000 multiprocessors that could eventually incorporate up to 16 CPUs. Late last year, Phil Hestor, vice-president of systems and technology at IBM’s Advanced Workstation Division in Austin, Texas, described how multiprocessing for the RS/6000 range would start with a four-way offering rising to a likely maximum of 16 CPUs, with clustering required thereafter, and that clustering would be the method for scientific work, while multiprocessors would be for commercial work.
