“IBM’s RS/6000 and AIX announcement this week can be seen as the
first of many from the major enterprise vendors in the lead-up to
Intel’s Merced launch.”
“Big Blue announced the release of three new RS/6000-class
servers and an upgrade to its AIX-branded UNIX operating system in
a major push for the UNIX server market. The most significant part
of the announcement was the launch of the new RS/6000 S80
e-business server. At its height, the S80 supports 24-way SMP
(symmetric multi-processing) and incorporates new 450MHz 64-bit
PowerPC processors using new copper technology.”
“IBM developed copper inter-connect technology for its processor
two years ago to overcome the clock-speed limitations of
aluminium…”
“IBM also says that this unit will work with AIX and Linux.
The new 4.3.3 version of AIX is claimed to be the first step along
the road of Project Monterey, IBM’s push to make its AIX compatible
with its PowerPC and Intel’s IA64 processors.”