IBM announces industry's most comprehensive 64-bit UNIX solution

Somers, NY, October 7, 1997 . . . IBM today announced the most comprehensive 64-bit solution in UNIX computing, the RS/6000 Model S70 server.

When combined with new 64-bit AIX Version 4.3 and new 64-bit applications and middleware from IBM and its Business Partners, the S70 is the most comprehensive 64-bit UNIX computing solution available anywhere.

AIX 4.3 offers customers what few other UNIX operating systems can: the ability to run both 64-bit and 32-bit applications concurrently. This gives customers immediate performance gains, helps to preserve their application investment, and also prepares them for a smooth transition to the future of 64-bit computing.

With the introduction of V4.3, AIX also becomes the most web-ready operating environment in the UNIX industry. Now the entire RS/6000 server portfolio on AIX V4.3 is optimized to take an enterprise into the world of e-business.

"In less than one year, we have more than tripled the performance capability of our RS/6000 enterprise servers while still giving customers fantastic price/performance," said Mark Bregman, general manager, IBM RS/6000 Division. "Customers looking for investment protection, performance, growth or to capitalize on e-business need look no further then the RS/6000. No other UNIX vendor can match the RS/6000's capabilities for mission-critical applications -- from hardware to systems management and high availability clustering, to support and service."

Why 64-bit computing?

As e-business and the move of mission-critical applications to distributed computing environments begin to play a larger role in business, many companies are experiencing phenomenal information growth. That growth is pushing the limits and taxing the performance and throughput of standard 32-bit systems.

The benefits of new applications like data mining and data warehousing will require larger systems and larger databases that support 64-bit computing solutions.

IBM's 64-bit solution -- the Model S70 running AIX 4.3 -- is uniquely positioned in the UNIX industry to meet high-performance computing needs. Enterprise customers like banks, manufacturers, retailers and hospitals, who run mission-critical e-business, on-line transaction processing or enterprise resource planning applications, will find the power of the Model S70 more then up to their most demanding computing requirements.

Product highlights

RS/6000 Model S70 Enterprise Server

The Model S70 further expands RS/6000 scalability in the high-end enterprise server market.

The S70 is available as a 4-, 8- or 12-way Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP). Four PowerPC RS64 microprocessors are mounted on a single circuit board, which is housed in a protective "book." The S70 can be purchased with up to 16 gigabytes of memory to support the growing demand for 64-bit applications. All processor and memory books slide into slots in a single tower system for convenient future performance upgrades.

I/O features are contained in separate racks from the processing tower. Each rack contains either one or two I/O drawers with PCI slots for attaching disk files, communications adapters or terminals.

The 14 slots include five 64-bit slots and nine 32-bit slots. Each drawer also has 12 hot-swappable disks for up to 54GB of storage, and both SSA and SCSI disks are supported for additional storage capability.

The S70 comes with the reliability, availability and serviceability features customers expect in RS/6000 products, including online AIX diagnostics and a service processor that can detect system trouble and report it to the customer or to service professionals.

Most industry leading software vendors have tested their applications and database products on the S70 and have reported to IBM that their applications will run on AIX 4.3. Baan reported to IBM that it was able to run its existing 32-bit applications on AIX 4.3 without any program modifications while tripling its performance. QAD reported to IBM that they also had more than tripled the performance of its 32-bit application on the S70. Pick Systems reported to IBM that they had realized a performance boost of almost 700 percent running its application on the S70, compared to the RS/6000 Model R40.

Database vendors testing their current 32-bit offerings on the S70 include IBM DB2, Informix, Lotus, Oracle, Sybase and Software AG. Work is already underway to test 64-bit databases on the S70.

AIX Version 4.3

At the heart of the RS/6000 64-bit computing solution is the new version of the award-winning AIX operating system. AIX V4.3 maintains binary compatibility with previous releases of AIX, and will support 32-bit and 64-bit applications concurrently, helping customers move to the next generation of computing while still utilizing their existing unmodified 32-bit applications on the same server.

Included with AIX V4.3 is the latest browser technology --- Netscape Navigator 4.0, IBM's Domino Go Webserver and Netscape's FastTrack entry Web server. With the updated release of the Java Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler, Java byte code is compiled to native machine code at runtime, boosting Java performance up to 25 times. Internet Protocol Version 6 in AIX V4.3 significantly enhances the industry standard security and filtering features important for applications in a Web-ready environment.

Combined with a robust set of e-business POWERsolutions on the RS/6000 to address content serving and management, security, collaboration and commerce, AIX and the RS/6000 deliver end-to-end solutions that solve customers business problems.

Simply stated, e-business is where information technology meets the Internet. The RS/6000 has the technology leadership and the e-business experience to help customers gain Web access, extend existing business applications to be accessible to Web-users, or create new Java-based applications.

AIX V4.3 has additional Network Computing tools including Ultimedia Services Adobe Acrobat Reader, DCE Clients, and Network Station Manager.

For mission critical environments, AIX V4.3 supports HACMP 4.2.2, IBM's industry-leading High Availability Cluster Multi-Processing software for realtime backup and recovery of critical data.

AIX V4.3 is designed to comply with the Single UNIX Specification, Version 2 (UNIX98) covering both 32-bit and 64-bit computing.

The AIX Licensed Program Products roadmap provides a complete list of software products that have been tested on the Model S70.

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