IBM’s Tuesday announcement was a mite thin this week, but it did include the first of the company’s Supercomputing Systems Extensions previewed on May 30 – and one of the sexiest. The Parallel Input-Output Access Method provides high-speed data access to IBM 3380 disks and to some non-disk devices. High-speed data access is achieved by using multiple input-output paths in parallel as well as by optimising access along individual data paths. The software, for people with Vector Facilities fitted, has a one-time charge of $25,000 and is out now – and will no doubt in due course play a major role in general data processing applications when IBM is satisfied that it is solid enough, and has the appropriate disks.
