The biggest no-show at the UniForum show which opens in Washington today – unless IBM changes it’s mind in a hurry or decides to hide the thing somewhere off-stand – is IBM’s forthcoming Rios Unix family, which according to InfoWorld will be called the System/6000 Power family. The general consensus seems to be that the long awaited new generation AIX system, first mooted for launch last summer, will now appear early next month, and IBM has already begun contacting US consultants to ask for their attendance at a non-disclosure briefing down in Austin, Texas on February 8. One leading US analyst, who wants to remain anonymous, believes that the pricing and configuration of DEC’s MIPS RISC workstations and servers announced last July threw IBM back on itself and delayed the original launch. It then went on to miss its proposed October 1989 and now the January UniForum launch dates. InfoWorld expects six models all using a single ROMP II RISC chip and featuring the enhanced Micro Channel revealed in October. At the low-end will be a diskless desktop system with 4Mb to 16Mb memory, Token Ring or Ethernet slots, two serial and one parallel port, with a 16MHz chip running at 16 MIPS. Then comes a desktop workstation model similar to a PS/2 Model 70, with 8Mb to 64Mb memory, 120Mb to 640Mb internal hard disk, four Micro Channel slots and a 20MHz, 20 MIPS CPU. A floor-standing 20 MIPS box similar to the PS/2 Model 80 will have up to four drives of 320Mb or 640Mb each, and eight Micro Channel slots. The mid-range model will come in a double-widthtower cabinet with up to six drives, eight Micro Channel slots and 25MHz CPU delivering 30 MIPS performance that’s six instructions every five cycles: pretty clever. Finally comes a 9370-like rack-mounted model with 16Mb to 128Mb RAM, eight Micro Channel slots and up to 8Gb disk. The last features a 50MHz, 50 MIPS processor. High performance graphics will be provide on the new machine by using an 80860-based co-processor. Pricing is expected to be aggressive, something of a change from IBM, whose last product to take the market by surprise with its low tags was the 4300 way back in 1979. UniForum Special – Below.
