Clustering is all the rage at IBM Corp these days, and having outlined its plans for turning a VAXcluster-type Sysplex of CMOS multiprocessing nodes into the mainframe of the future, the company has now turned its attention to the AS/400. According to IBM System User, the company is looking at clustering up to eight AS/400s together to enable complexes of the machines to fulfill the role currently played by water-cooled mainframes. Although the eight-system complexes – set for customer testing next year – will initially be conventional clusters, with one system acting as the master and parcelling out work to the others, with each having its own copy of the OS/400 operating syst em, IBM talks boldly of moving on towards moderate parallelism once it has developed a version of OS/400 that can handle it. Other plans for the AS/400 next year include a 30% improve ment in processor performance the usual winding up of the clock on the chips and other tweaks, and an expansion to six from four in the number of processors supported in the multiprocessor models of the line.
