Hi All
21-June-2008 is our dear AS/400’s 20th birthday. Having been a
bachelor (System i) for many years it got married to System p (RS/6000) and now the
union is called as IBM Power Systems (i to We).
The AS/400 (I still love to call this way) had an amazing journey picking up all the hot technologies
both at the Software and Hardware level. No matter how much ever has changed, there are few things that will make this rock-solid
business machine stand out amongst the rest of the crowd. These are:
1)
Security, Reliability, Availability and above all Scalability.
2)
Single-Level Storage
3) Technology Independent Machine Interface
(TIMI)
Anyways, these are known stuff that everyone
is aware of, thought it will be a good refresher.
I attended a Webinar last Thursday (6/19)
hosted by Tango/04 where I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Frank Soltis talk about “THE FUTURE
OF THE IBM i PLATFORM”. On this special occasion, I thought it will be worth while to share some of
the key points in random order:
1)
Rochester, Minnesota (birthplace of AS/400) will celebrate the birthday on
Monday (6/23). I
THINK WE MUST ALSO CELEBRATE BY CUTTING A BLACK AND GREEN CAKE.
2)
2008 is a special year for 3 things:
a.
OCT 2008 marks the 30th Anniversary
of SYSTEM/38 (Predecessor of AS/400)
b. NOV 2008, marks the 40th Anniversary of Dr Soltis’ move to Rochester when he was assigned a task for replacing a SYSTEM 3
3)
After the iSeries merged with RS/6000 during Apr 2008, there were mixed reactions in the market.
a.
Large Customers are very happy about the merging of platforms
b. Small
and Medium customers felt they are losing their dear AS/400
c. Dr. Soltis mentioned that the exact same
feeling was there 20 Yrs ago when small and medium customers refused to buy/upgrade to AS/400 from S/38
4)
We all know during the year 1995 IBM introduced a major hardware change that led to moving
48-bit CISC to 64-bit RISC
a. The
transition was smooth no rewrite and in rare instances a recompile was required
b.
When 64-bit processor was introduced, everything inside the box was 64-bit including the OS
& DB.
c. The platform had
already set stage for 128-bit
5) Now
here are some of the Futures that IBM is focusing on:
a. World of Super Computers. IBM currently holds the record building the world’s fastest computer (Road Runner)
b. The trend is to bring in Super Computing to desktops using super fast processors
c.
Currently the POWER 6 (introduced in 2007) processor running within IBM
Power Systems is the fastest processor in the world
d. In
2010 IBM is coming out with POWER 7
e. With
the new faster processors there might be extensions to OS, Programming Languages
f.
IBM has introduced HYBRID ARCHITECTURE involving POWER6 + 8 Special Purpose Processors giving
a 10-12% performance improvement
g.
POWER7 will introduce a Virtual Accelerator that further improves the performance.
6)
The session ended with a Q&A with Dr. Soltis. Key among them are:
a.
Will windows run on POWER6?
IBM initiated the discussion with Microsoft in Year 2000
regarding this but did not materialize. As per Dr. Soltis, Microsoft is too busy now to move windows to 64-bit (which IBM
has already done in 1995).
b.
Will Intel compete with POWER processors?
Dr. Soltis’
personal opinion is that for the next few years, IBM and INTEL are going to be the only two chip making vendors. The
target markets for these chips are entirely different. IBM POWER chips are clearly for High-end computing whereas INTEL is
more for Mobile and Low-end computing.
Sorry if I had bored you with this long detail. If you have read this so far it clearly shows
your commitment/loyalty to AS/400.
Once again a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to AS/400, A VERY HAPPY MARRIED LIFE WITH SYSTEM P and MAY YOU LIVE LONGER.
Thanks
..Courtesy: A friend from Mindtree
