Dr. Frank didn't address "maintenance levels" in today's webinar, but he did say that Power 7 was due in 2010. Doesn't sound like they're giving up. In fact, based upon past history (my major at UT), they're probably already working on Power 8 and, even, 9.
He, also, talked about the new supercomputer at Los Alamos (someone posted a link to an article this week) and its basic (but still over my head) architecture and how it relates to the i. Again, doesn't sound like retrenchment to me. I don't know "who" the trade media are, but it may be that, while reading some financials, they may have simply seen reduced costs and translated that into "maintenance" while it *may* simply mean "doing more with less." I don't have any facts; just speculation of various possible scenarios.
What I found especially interesting was his discussion of chip density (make it smaller to make it faster) and how that limitation (small size) has probably been reached. As well as the diminishing returns of threads on processing speeds; doubling the number of threads does *not* double the speed. After either 32 or 64 threads (hope I got that right; I wasn't taking notes) there is little or no improvement, but the complexity of managing those threads increases as you add more, which means changes (enhancements) to all languages, including RPG and COBOL - but because of the i's architecture (aka: Planning Ahead) even 36 environment programs will be able to continue running - without re-compiling.
A trivia bit he threw in was that PASE originally stood for Private Address Space Environment; marketing changed it to Portable Applications Solution Environment.
Jerry C. Adams
IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale
office: 615-995-7024
email: jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Richter
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 12:58 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Happy Birthday to the AS/400, iSeries, System i, IBM i
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Anne Lucas <alucas@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm two days behind in reading midrange-l....just read a post (6/17)
with a comment about the birthday celebrating the "name" AS/400.
It's the technology, how it has evolved, and what it has become that we
celebrate! It is the product and it's capabilities that we celebrate.
Not the name!
There will be a celebration in Rochester and the appropriate IBM AS/400
thru IBM i executives will be on hand to help celebrate.
if recent reports in the trade media that R&D on the core OS has been
reduced by IBM to maintenance levels, that dampers the celebration for
me. I think the new hardware is great and cant wait for my BCS JS12
order to be shipped. I hope at the celebration there will be
announcements of the features planned for V6R2 and when to expect its
release.
Will G Glenn Henry be recognized as the person who created the
software and MI side of the system? ( Dr Frank, I understand, gets
credit for the SLS )
-Steve
--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit:
http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.
midrange.com
