Before IBM Corp’s promised 4.2 implementation of AIX emerges some time next year (CI No 2,660), still the furthest point of AIX futures that IBM is currently prepared to talk about despite categorical assurances of its continued development, there are two more releases due this year. AIX 4.1.3 is due any day and will take AIX symmetrical multiprocessing support from the current limit of four processors up to eight. Version 4.1.4 should be out by the end of this year and this will add support for more devices and general fixes, but little else of note. Even 4.2 itself will not be a major step up, says IBM. It will (of course) retain binary compatibility with 4.1, and, as already reported, and 64-bit addressing and PowerPC 620 support.
