New RS/6000 POWER3 SMP nodes and T70 Technical Server

Somers 13 Sep 99 Both commercial and scientific customers using the IBM RS/6000 SP now can upgrade to even more powerful POWER3 SMP nodes. Compared with their predecessors, the new nodes deliver four times the number of processors, have four times the memory and have eight times the peak memory bandwidth. The maximum disk capacity has increased 18 times and the number of I/O adapters 26 times compared with their predecessors. These nodes are ideal for solving large scientific problems or for complex decision support. The RS/6000 T70 Technical Server uses the new POWER3 SMP nodes in a compact form factor and is ideal as a departmental server for handling numeric- and I/O-intensive applications such as computer-aided engineering, computational chemistry and seismic analysis.

In addition to IBM, more than 35 leading software developers, including Oracle and SAP, are announcing support for the new RS/6000 lineup.

IBM also announced plans to deliver the ability to run most Linux applications on RS/6000s with AIX 4.3.3 in the first half of next year. This capability will be delivered as a no-charge, open-source download.

IBM will open a Project Monterey porting center in San Mateo, California this fall. Three additional porting centers -- in Waltham, Massachusetts; Hursley, England and Stuttgart, Germany -- are expected to begin operation next year.

Project Monterey is an IBM-led initiative to develop an enterprise-ready, high-volume Unix that runs on IBM and Intel microprocessors.

At the centers, software developers may port and tune applications for today's Monterey products including IBM's AIX and SCO's UnixWare, and may also prepare their applications for migration to Monterey for forthcoming Intel IA-64 processors. IBM will outfit the centers with IBM RS/6000 and Netfinity servers along with servers from other hardware vendors.

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