IBM’s Northstar Points to the Future of the AS/400e

On September 11, IBM will begin shipments of the next generation of AS/400e processors: the Northstars. The Northstars follow fast on the heels of the AS/400e Apache machines, which debuted last summer and were enhanced in the spring with the model 170 Apache Invaders. While IBM is announcing new machines in the 170 family that make use of the 64-bit Northstar PowerPC processors, the Northstar announcement is geared mainly toward high-end AS/400 customers who need more power than even the eight-way and 12-way Apache servers can deliver. That doesn’t mean that the Northstars aren’t for everybody. They are. It’s just that most of the low-end Northstar models do not differ appreciably—in terms of raw performance or price/performance—from the Apache systems they replace.

That said, the Northstar processor (true to its celestial namesake and navigational position in the northern hemisphere’s night sky) clearly points to the direction that IBM is taking with its AS/400e systems and servers. The Northstars, more than the Apaches that preceded them, make it clear that the future belongs to the server models in the AS/400 line, not the plain vanilla systems that still make up the majority in the AS/400 installed base. The reason is simple enough. By the middle of the first decade of the next century, RPG will still be in use on the AS/400, but as much as half the code running on the machines will be Java. How these applications will generate user interfaces and display data remains to be seen; they will most likely be using client-side Java applets, which can be fed to network computers over the network in a thin client environment or stored on the client in a more traditional client/server network. The point is, 5250 terminals and PC emulation of the 5250 protocol will be a thing of the past. Some RPG-5250 legacy applications will always be around: Infrequently used applications, programs whose source

code is missing, and applications that aren’t worth the trouble to change will all be there, still fully supported in OS/400. But, unless IBM totally changes its tack, Java and server models are the future of the AS/400 line.

IBM has been prepping the AS/400 customer base for this moment since 1993 when it announced its first specialized AS/400 server models. The servers are exactly the same as plain vanilla systems except in one respect: IBM put a governor (a special OS/400 program called CFINT) in the servers that prevents them from handling very many 5250 terminal or emulated sessions. IBM, of course, turns this around and says that the AS/400 servers have been “tuned” to have better batch performance than their interactive (5250) performance would imply looking at AS/400 system models. But let’s get this straight. An S40 model is exactly the same as a 650, except that it has a special program in it to prevent the 5250 terminal protocol from working as fast as it does on the 650. The only other important difference between the two machines is their respective price tags. A 650-2243, for example, costs $1.25 million, while the S40-2261 (exactly the same piece of hardware) costs only $300,000. IBM could, of course, just have two different versions of OS/400—one with 5250 enabled, one with it crippled—and charge different prices for each version. But it would have a much more difficult time with public relations and marketing. Think about the furor in the customer base if IBM tried to charge $900,000 for its 5250 data stream software! But, of course, that is exactly what IBM is doing, regardless of what its brochures say.

The point is, IBM really wants AS/400 customers to move to client/server architectures, and these kinds of economic incentives are working. Moreover, the Apache and most recent high-end Northstar 650 systems offer customers more than enough power if they want to keep their monolithic RPG host programs as they are. But to do so, they will have to pay a lot more for the same exact hardware as those customers who buy server models.

This kind of tough stance can backfire, of course. IBM had more than its share of trouble getting the System/36 base to move to the AS/400. Hewlett-Packard has tried for many years to coax and prod and coerce its HP 3000 customers, who use the MPE operating system, onto its virtually identical HP-UX 9000 UNIX servers. In late July, HP threw in the towel and promised to port MPE to its forthcoming PA-RISC 8500 chips as well as to the IA-64 Merced chips it is co-developing with Intel. The HP 3000 base is about one-fifth the size of the AS/400 base, and its users are just as fiercely loyal to their systems and applications software. Even free UNIX couldn’t change their minds. (Free, indeed. What could be worse for a customer of a much-beloved and easy-to-use proprietary operating system than to be forced to deal with the eccentricities and complexities of C++ and UNIX? IBM was smarter than Hewlett-Packard about this one. It brought C and UNIX functionality to those AS/400 customers who wanted it from within OS/400 rather than trying to foist RS/6000s and AIX on them.)

Servers Soon to Eclipse Systems

Indications are that IBM is winning, ever so slowly, its cold war to push the AS/400 base from plain vanilla AS/400 systems and their 5250 terminal software to less expensive server models and their more modern client/server software. Last year, IBM sold 12,000 of the entry-level model 150 servers and is on track to sell even more this year. Moreover, IBM has sold about 6,000 of the new 170 Apache Invaders. These machines, first announced in February, only started taking off in the market during the second quarter. IBM says that demand on both the 150 and the 170 is outstripping supply and that it has expanded its manufacturing capacity for the models. The 150, says IBM, is increasingly

popular at companies that have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of locations that, for one reason or another, require local processing capability. The 170 is also popular in these settings, but it is being used by companies that are dumping their homegrown code and putting in modest enterprise resource planning (ERP) suites necessary to support a few hundred seats. The 170 gives the best bang for the buck in the AS/400 line, so it is no surprise that customers are changing their system and software plans to make use of it.

The widespread adoption of the 150 and 170 is just part of the trend away from AS/400 systems to AS/400e servers. According to IBM, a whopping half of the AS/400s sold these days are server models, and among IBM’s biggest AS/400 customers, sales are more like 70 percent. IBM is also selling a few hundred of its specialized mixed-mode custom servers each month. The mixed-mode servers have been tailored for SAP, J.D. Edwards, Intentia, JBA, MAPICS, and SSA ERP suites and have performance characteristics and prices that fall somewhere between the AS/400e systems and servers upon which they are based. It is the 150, 170, S30, S40, and mixed-mode server models that are drawing new customers to the AS/400 base, too. According to IBM, about 25 percent of its sales are now coming from new customers, a figure considerably greater than in past years. By and large, these companies are coming to the AS/400 to install ERP suites. They would rather have the integration and reliability of an AS/400e than pay much less for a similarly powerful NT Server setup. A UNIX server is generally as reliable as the AS/400, and costs no more or less than it does; however, getting a suite of applications up and running on UNIX takes more time, on average, than on OS/400.

The September 1 Northstar announcement brings to light IBM’s increasing focus on the server models. There are 13 Northstar models: two 650 plain vanilla systems, five 170 Apache Invaders, two regular S40 servers, and four mixed-mode servers. They all require a new release of the OS/400 operating system, V4R3, which will also run on any AS/400 or AS/400e system or server that has a 64-bit PowerPC chip as its central processor.

At the heart of all of these models is the Northstar processor, IBM’s fifth 64-bit PowerPC processor and the fourth one to bear the AS/400 moniker (the first chip, the Cobra, was used only in the Advanced 36). The Northstar chip is a modified implementation of the existing Apache chip. As the PowerPC comparison table accompanying this article shows (see Figure 1), the Northstar chip can be thought of as a mixture of the best parts of the Muskie chipset (used in 530 systems and 53S servers), the existing Apache chip, and the ill-fated PowerPC 620 chip that was designed (several times) by IBM and Motorola, IBM’s PowerPC partner. The PowerPC 620 has never seen the light of day, but some of its better ideas have made it into Muskie, Apache, and now Northstar.

Like Muskie, the Northstar has two fixed-point integer units and a fast floating- point unit. The two integer units allow it to process up to four instructions per cycle, rather than the three per cycle of Apache. Muskie had a floating-point unit that was rated at 308 megaFLOPS (or MFLOPS—million floating operations per second), and Northstar includes a math coprocessor that is almost as powerful. The Northstar needs this fast floating-point unit because many of the new data warehousing search and indexing functions that come in OS/400 V4R3 need number-crunching ability. The Muskie could do about half the FLOPS of IBM’s forthcoming Power 3 chip for technical RS/6000 workstations and servers; IBM Rochester overdesigned Muskie just to prove it knew how to do technical stuff. The basic memory and I/O subsystems of the Apache servers remain essentially unchanged with the Northstars; these subsystems, sporting IBM

supercomputing technology, already have more than enough bandwidth to keep Northstar- based processors well fed with data.

The Northstar processor used in the AS/400 family comes in three speeds: 200, 252, and 262 MHz. They can be equipped with either 4 or 8 MB of L2 cache memory, twice as much as Apache had. The Northstar has 64 KB of on-chip (L1) data cache memory and another 64 KB of instruction cache. This is same amount that was put into the Apache chip.

The slowest Northstar chip is used in four of the 170 Invaders. Three of the four 200-MHz Northstars are geared down to have the same exact performance as last spring’s 170 models using the 100-MHz Apache chip. (IBM is doing this for marketing reasons, not technical ones. The 170s using the slowest Northstars easily have five times as much raw processing power as IBM is letting customers get at.) The 252-MHz Northstar is used in the new high-end 170 Invader, which offers somewhat better performance than the 125- MHz Apache-based 170s they replace, although, again, even this is much less power than is really under the hood. The 262-MHz Northstars are used in the 650 systems and the S40 servers, and they are going full tilt boogie, no holds barred. For details, see Figure 2, the table comparing Apache and Northstar AS/400e models. (An expanded version of this table, with more detail, is shown on MC’s Web site at http://www.midrangecomputing. com/code).

The two new 650 family AS/400e systems come with either eight or 12 processors. The 650-2188 comes with eight processors, with 8 MB of L2 cache each. The base system comes with 4.2 GB of disk capacity, expandable to 2.1 terabytes, and 1,024 MB of main memory, expandable to 40 GB. Together, the eight processors in the 650- 2188 deliver 3660 Commercial Processing Workload (CPW) units of processing power in a client/server configuration. That’s 60 percent faster than the current 12-way Apache server. The 650-2189 has exactly the same salient characteristics, only it comes with 12 processors that deliver 4550 CPW units of processing power. That should translate into about 49,000 TPC-C transactions per minute, putting the AS/400 solidly back in among the pack of high-end UNIX servers. Both 650 Northstar machines are in a new software group, P50, which means higher program product prices for customers who upgrade to the Northstar 650 from other 640 and 650 systems. (As we were going to press, IBM has not yet set prices for the Northstars, but did say that the price/performance of the new machines would more or less follow the existing Apache line. The list prices shown in the AS/400e salient characteristics table on our Web site are our estimates based on current AS/400e prices. We will provide the actual list prices in the September 7 issue of AS/400 Monday Morning Update and in “Midrange Insights,” MC, November 1998.)

The hardware in the S40-2207 (eight-way) and S40-2208 (12-way) is exactly the same as the 650-2188 and 650-2189, but the S40s can have only 28 twinax terminals directly attached to them, and they provide only 120 CPW units of processing power in interactive mode. They are also in the lower P40 software group, just like the S40 models they supercede. Upgrades from 53S, S20, S30, and S40 servers are available. Customers with other server models wanting one of these big machines will need to do a box swap.

There are four other S40 server models. Two of them, the 2340 and 2341, are mixed-mode implementations of the 650 and S40 Northstars. IBM first announced mixed- mode servers last August with the Apache models. At that time, there were special S20 and S30 models designed to support legacy applications as well as the new ERP suites from J.D. Edwards, SSA, and SAP. IBM has since then expanded the mixed-mode line to support suites from Intentia, JBA, and MAPICS. The eight-way 2340 can have 7000 twinax terminals attached to it, like the 650, but has been tweaked to provide a lot more

CPW interactive performance than the S40—1050 units of processing power compared to 120 units—but still only about a third as much as a plain vanilla 650 Northstar. Similarly, the 12-way S40-2341 can support 7000 CRT attachments but has a CPW interactive rating of only 2050—about half that of the 650-2189. Existing S20 and S30 mixed-mode servers can be upgraded to the S40 Northstars.

The remaining two mixed-mode servers, the SB1-2312 and SB1-2313, are stripped-down S40 mixed-mode servers designed specifically to support the middle tier of a three-tier SAP R/3 implementation. (Customers generally use a regular S30 or S40 server as their central R/3 database server, although they can use a 6XX model if they already own one or have legacy applications they need to support in the interim.) The SB1 machines have fixed memory and disk capacity and cannot be used for any other jobs. The Apache SB1 R/3 servers can be upgraded to the Northstar SB1 models. The SB1 Northstars will probably cost about the same as the S40 Northstars while having essentially the same performance characteristics and none of the expandability. If that’s the case, customers would do better to buy a regular S40 server; the S40, at least, will have better resale value because it is a more general-purpose computer than an SB1.

The remaining five AS/400e Northstar models are in the 170 Invader family. IBM says that these models do not replace the existing Apache models but merely augment the line. Whether or not this is true is a matter of semantics, not technology, since there are only minor differences between the Apache Invaders and the Northstar Invaders. First, the Northstar models support IBM’s 17.5-GB disk drives and therefore have twice the maximum disk capacity as their predecessors. The two high-end Northstar Invaders, the 170-2385 and the 170-2386, actually have about 44 percent more client/server performance and a tiny bit more interactive performance than their Apache predecessors, the 170-2176 and 170-2183. The two largest Northstar Invaders can have up to 3.5 GB of main memory, compared to the 1 GB of the Apache Invaders that came before them. Because of the expanded disk and memory capacity of the Northstar Invaders, the three top models are in higher software groups than the equivalently powered Apache Invaders.

Unless IBM changes its mind about pricing, we expect that the Northstar Invaders will have the same or higher prices, meaning they will offer little or no price/performance improvement compared to the Apache 170s already in the channel. Because IBM will offer lower prices per megabyte for the 17.5-GB disk drive used in Northstars than for the current 8.6-GB drive used in Apaches, and because IBM has cut memory prices radically to compete against BCC Technologies, IBM will be able to say that the 170 Northstars offer better price/performance than the 170 Apaches.

IBM has undoubtedly relaunched the Invader line in an attempt to cash in on the cachet that the Invaders have in the marketplace. Only a few months ago, according to rumors coming out of Rochester, IBM didn’t even plan to announce low-end Northstar systems at all. But AS/400 customers with modestly sized, vintage 9406 systems who are stressed out about their Year 2000 bugs and euro currency woes are using the model 170s to host new application suites or to test their in-house developed applications—either of which they hope to have up and running in time to celebrate in earnest on New Year’s Day,
2000. The top-speed Apache Invader might have the same interactive CPW rating as the fastest Northstar Invader, but it doesn’t have enough memory and disk capacity to actually run a full suite of applications used by the typical 9406 customer.

Now, the high-end Northstar Invader running at 255 MHz and with 4 MB of L2 cache memory has a CPW interactive rating of 70 and can have up to 3.5 GB of main memory and 175 GB of disk capacity. This means that the machine can replace all B, D, E, and F series 9406 machines and give these customers anywhere from 50 percent to 20

times more capacity than their current systems have on interactive jobs while, at the same time, giving them screaming performance on batch, program compiling, and data warehousing jobs (at least compared to their current machines). The Northstar Invaders can similarly take over the jobs for 200, 300, 310, and 30S CISC Advanced Series models as well as for 400, 40S, 500, 50S, and some 53S models. This capability makes the Northstar Invaders an appropriate machine for the vast majority of customers who haven’t upgraded to a more modern AS/400. If the Northstar Invaders and their V4 software (which supports e-business and collaborative computing as well as enhanced database and compiler software) plus the fear of Y2K and euro crashes can’t get vintage AS/400 customers to move to new machines, then nothing short of flood, earthquake, or an errant asteroid wiping out their computer room will.

There Ain’t No Such Thing as Free Software

IBM could have just cranked up the clock speed on the Apache Invader and added more L2 cache if it wanted to boost the 170 line. Instead, IBM decided to use Northstar chips not for technical reasons, but for marketing ones. It’s our guess that customers balked at the prospect of buying an S20 server because they didn’t need the kind of expandability these machines had and because they would have to buy a very large one to be able to support a few hundred green-screen users. So, IBM decided to beef up the memory and disk capacity of the Invaders with its Northstar generation, and, in exchange for doing so, bumped up software prices on the models by one or two notches. IBM and its software business partners will now garner more money on systems and applications programs than they would have made on Apache Invaders, which are all in the lowest software-pricing tier.

Technically speaking, the different software tiers have no effect on OS/400 pricing since OS/400 is bundled with the system. However, V4 definitely has a list price—anyone buying a new or used 4XX or 5XX system or server can tell you that—and it is $750 to $40,000 more expensive than V3R7, working out to a 16 to 41 percent price hike on a supposedly “free” operating system. Even those customers buying AS/400e models rather than first-generation RISC AS/400 models are paying for V4 software; they are just paying for it with higher hardware prices than IBM might otherwise set if it were charging separately for the hardware and software.

Run Your Business, Not Your Computer

IBM didn’t just build new hardware with the Northstars. There are plenty of enhancements in V4R3—which is required for the Northstars but can be run on any RISC- based AS/400. There are too many enhancements, in fact, to discuss them all in this column. This is why we will be detailing them in AS/400 Monday Morning Update in the weeks following the September 1 announcement. But here’s an overview to tide you over until we get the full details from IBM:

V4R3 does not include any significant performance enhancements over V4R2. The

same was true for V4R2 compared to V4R1, so this comes as no surprise. (V4R1 did offer significant performance enhancements over V3R7, especially on machines with more than one processor, a reason why even customers with old RISC AS/400s should consider moving to V4.) IBM and Barsa Consulting are quick to point out that V4R3 is, like V4R2 before it, among the most bug-free and stable releases of OS/400. This only stands to reason, however, since the core code in OS/400 hasn’t really changed since V3R7 came out two years ago. Since that time, IBM has added features and functions to OS/400, most

notably Web and Domino support and various forms of parallel processing. But the guts of OS/400 remain essentially unchanged.

That doesn’t mean V4R3 isn’t a worthwhile release to move to. From the limited information that IBM has made available prior to the Northstar announcement, there’s plenty in V4R3 that will be of interest to AS/400 customers. Many of these enhancements make it easier to install and manage OS/400. As the OS/400 upgrade table shows (see Figure 3), customers with most prior OS/400 versions and releases can move directly to V4R3.

Here’s a basic rundown of the enhancements:
• EZ-Setup Wizard. This is a Windows NT and Windows 95 program that provides a graphical interface to help novice AS/400 users set up OS/400 V4R3. IBMers who don’t know anything about setting up an operating system said it took them about an hour to set up an AS/400.

• Operations Console. This is a follow-on to the Client Access Comm Console that is available for V4R3 users who use TCP/IP to link their AS/400s to Windows 95 or Windows NT clients. Operations Console provides a graphical system console session. It also includes a security wizard that walks administrators through the task of setting up adequate security options within OS/400 to safely get their machines on the Web. A real- time graphical performance monitor providing the same functions as Performance Monitor/400 is included as well.

• AS/400 NetServer. This feature, previewed in February, is now available for V4R3. AS/400 NetServer allows an AS/400 to participate in a Windows 95 and the

Windows NT Network Neighborhood peer-to-peer network. Windows clients can link to the AS/400 over LAN links through TCP/IP software without buying special hardware. AS/400 NetServer provides simple print and file serving from an AS/400 but does not provide 5250 terminal emulation. With V4R3, IBM has also added support for the high- performance NT file system (NTFS) increasingly used with NT rather than the DOS FAT file system that comes standard with Windows clients and servers. The NTFS support in V4R3 allows AS/400s to move data to and from NT on either the Integrated PC Server or

outboard PC servers.

• Java enhancements. IBM has put support for the latest Java software development kit, SDK 1.1.6, and its much-improved Java Virtual Machine (JVM) into OS/400. Java applets running in the JVM built into V4R3 can perform as much as 50 percent faster than with OS/400 V4R2. IBM has also added support for Java servlets (server-side Java applets) and San Francisco Java templates 1.2;

IBM says support for San Francisco 1.3 will be available by year’s end. IBM has also put additional Java base classes into its AS/400 Toolbox for Java.

• ILE C and ILE C++. IBM has added a 64-bit integer data type and Integrated File System data read capability to the ILE C compiler and is now offering, on a PRPQ basis, a new ILE C++ compiler for AS/400s. Both require V4R3.

• Business Intelligence. IBM has made significant enhancements to DB2/400 that take advantage of parallelism on machines with more than one processor to speed up data warehouses. V3R1 allowed parallel table scans, index scans, hash joins, and hash groupings; V4R1 added parallel index builds; V4R2 added parallel indexing of dynamic bitmaps; now, V4R3 adds parallel data load, parallel index management and parallel encoded vector indexing (EVI). The EVI is a patented IBM algorithm that can cut query times to the point where complex data warehouse queries can be done with near online performance. A query on a 225-GB data warehouse running on an Apache S40 with V4R1

took 30 minutes. On that same system, it took 10 days to load up a 1-terabyte data warehouse. With the V4R3 parallel enhancements and the Northstar hardware supporting them, the same query took 35 seconds, and the 1-terabyte data warehouse loaded in 18 hours.

• Hierarchical storage management. HSM function is now built into OS/400 and offers better speed and more bells and whistles than IBM’s Backup/Recovery Media Services/400 program. With the integrated HSM software, AS/400 customers can set up their machines to automatically push data from fast disks to slower disks as it gets cold from lack of use. As data gets colder, the HMS software can then push it to even slower disks or disks set up with the controllers IBM announced in February that provide data compression. Additionally, the software can even move data to tape or optical storage automatically. This is exactly the kind of HSM function IBM’s MVS customers have enjoyed for a decade and, according to AS/400 shops familiar with both operating systems, the people in Rochester have done a much better job than their counterparts in Poughkeepsie.

www.midrangecomputing.com

For further information on this subject, see this archived edition of AS/400 Monday Morning Update on MC’s Web site at http://www. midrangecomputing.com/mmu/98/m980803.htm. There, we provide a detailed analysis of the Northstar PowerPC chips.

AS/400 PowerPC Chips

PowerPC A10 PowerPC A30 PowerPC A35 PowerPC A50 PowerPC A55 Cobra4 Muskie Apache Northstar Pulsar*

Date First Shipped 2Q 96 3Q 96 3Q 97 3Q 98 3Q 99 Max Clock Speed 90 MHz 182 MHz 125 MHz 262 MHz 600 MHz Chip Bits 64 64 64 64 64
Integer Units 1 2 1 2 2 Max Instructions Per Cycle 3 4 3 4 5 Max Theoretical MIPS 270 728 375 1048 3000 TPC-C Performance 1405 1837 3236 6275 11000 L1 Cache Memory 4 KB Instruct 8 KB Instruct 64 KB Instruct 64 KB Instruct 64 KB Instruct

8 KB Data 256 KB Data 64 KB Data 64 KB Data 64 KB Data L1/L2 Bandwidth (GB/sec) 2.8 GB/sec 5.8 GB/sec 4.0 GB/sec 8.4 GB/sec 19.2 GB/sec L2 Cache Memory 1 MB Opt None 1 MB - 4 MB 4 MB - 8 MB 4 MB - 8 MB Memory Bus Speed 25 MHz 77 MHz 83 MHz 83 MHz 100 MHz Memory Bandwidth 400 MB/sec 1.23 GB/sec 4.0 GB/sec 4.0 GB/sec 6.4 GB/sec Multiprocessing Capability None 2 - 4 way 2 - 12 way 2 - 12 way 2 - 24 way Chip Technology 0.5[.mu] CMOS-4S Bi-CMOS 0.5[.mu] CMOS-5X 0.35[.mu] CMOS-6S2 0.2[.mu] CMOS-7S Transistors In CPU ** 4.7 million 23.7 million 4.7 million 12.5 million 12.5 million Operating Voltage 3.6 V 3.6 V 2.5 V 2.5 V 1.5 V Heat Dissipation 18 W @ 77 MHz 130 W @ 154MHz 30 W @ 125 MHz 25 W @ 262 MHz 38 W @ 600 MHz

* Pulsar specs are estimates based on very sketchy data ** Northstar and Pulsar transistor counts include L2 cache memory; Muskie count includes memory controller circuits

Figure 1: AS/400 Power PC microprocessor comparisons

Salient Characteristics of AS/400e RISC Systems

AS/400 CPUs PPC AS Chip L2 Cache CPW CPW Memory (MB) File Space Max Model Chip/Set Speed per CPU C/S 5250 Min Max Max (GB) Twinax

600-2129 1 Cobra4 50 MHz NA 22.7 17.0 64 384 175.40 188

600-2134 1 Cobra4 50 MHz NA 32.5 24.4 64 384 175.40 188 600-2135 1 Cobra4 77 MHz NA 45.4 34.1 64 384 175.40 188 600-2136 1 Cobra4 77 MHz 1 MB 73.1 54.8 128 512 175.40 188 620-2175 1 Apache 100 MHz NA 50.0 37.5 64 2,048 944.80 2,392 620-2179 1 Apache 100 MHz NA 85.6 64.2 256 2,048 944.80 2,392 620-2180 1 Apache 100 MHz NA 113.8 85.4 256 2,048 944.80 2,392 620-2181 1 Apache 100 MHz 1 MB 210.0 157.5 256 2,048 944.80 2,392 620-2182 2 Apache 100 MHz 4 MB 464.3 348.2 256 4,096 944.80 2,392 640-2237 1 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 319.0 239.3 512 12,228 1,340 7,000 640-2238 2 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 583.3 437.5 512 12,228 1,340 7,000 640-2239 4 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 998.6 749.0 512 12,228 1,340 7,000 650-2240 8 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 1,794 1,345 1,024 20,480 1,546.1 7,000 650-2243 12 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 2,340 1,755 1,024 20,480 1,546.1 7,000 650-2188 8 Northstar 262 MHz 8 MB 3,660 2,745 1,024 40,960 2,100.0 7,000 650-2189 12 Northstar 262 MHz 8 MB 4,550 3,412 1,024 40,960 2,100.0 7,000

Salient Characteristics of AS/400e RISC Servers

AS/400 CPUs PPC AS Chip L2 Cache CPW CPW Memory (MB) File Space Max Model Chip/Set Speed per CPU C/S 5250 Min Max Max (GB) Twinax

9401-150 1 Cobra4 50 MHz NA 35.0 13.8 64 192 29.90 14 S10-2118 1 Cobra4 50 MHz NA 45.4 16.2 64 128 175.40 28 S10-2119 1 Cobra4 77 MHz 1 MB 73.1 24.4 384 512 175.40 28 170-2159 1 Apache 100 MHz NA 73.0 16.0 64 832 85.8 228 170-2160 1 Apache 100 MHz NA 114.0 23.0 64 832 85.8 228 170-2164 1 Apache 100 MHz 1 MB 210.0 29.0 256 1,024 85.8 228 170-2176 1 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 319.0 40.0 256 1,024 85.8 228 170-2183 1 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 319.0 67.0 256 1,024 85.8 228 170-2290 1 Northstar 200 MHz NA 73.0 20.0 64 832 175.0 228 170-2291 1 Northstar 200 MHz NA 115.0 25.0 64 832 175.0 228 170-2292 1 Northstar 200 MHz NA 220.0 30.0 256 1,024 175.0 228 170-2385 1 Northstar 200 MHz 4 MB 460.0 50.0 256 3,584 175.0 228 170-2386 1 Northstar 252 MHz 4 MB 460.0 70.0 256 3,584 175.0 228 S20-2161 1 Apache 100 MHz NA 113.8 31.0 256 2,048 944.80 28 S20-2163 1 Apache 100 MHz 1 MB 210.0 35.8 256 2,048 944.80 28 S20-2165 2 Apache 100 MHz 4 MB 464.3 49.7 256 4,096 944.80 28 S20-2166 4 Apache 100 MHz 4 MB 759.0 56.9 256 4,096 944.80 28 S30-2257 1 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 319.0 51.5 512 12,288 1,340.0 28 S30-2258 2 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 583.3 64.0 512 12,288 1,340.0 28 S30-2259 4 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 998.6 64.0 512 12,288 1,340.0 28

S30-2260 8 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 1,794 64.0 512 12,288 1,340.0 28

S40-2256 8 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 1,794 64.0 512 12,288 1,546.1 28 S40-2261 12 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 2,340 64.0 1,024 20,480 1,546.1 28 S40-2207 8 Northstar 262 MHz 8 MB 3,660 120.0 1,024 40,960 2,100.0 28 S40-2208 12 Northstar 262 MHz 8 MB 4,550 120.0 1,024 40,960 2,100.0 28

Mixed-mode AS/400e RISC Servers for SAP, J.D. Edwards, System Software

Associates, Mapics, Intentia, and JBA Enterprise Suites

AS/400 CPUs PPC AS Chip L2 Cache CPW CPW Memory (MB) File Space Max Model Chip/Set Speed per CPU C/S 5250 Min Max Max (GB) Twinax

SB1-2310 8 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB NA NA 4,096 NA 34.32 80 SB1-2311 12 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB NA NA 4,096 NA 34.32 80 SB1-2312 8 Northstar 262 MHz 8 MB NA NA 8,192 NA 34.32 28 SB1-2313 12 Northstar 262 MHz 8 MB NA NA 8,192 NA 34.32 28 S20-2177 4 Apache 100 MHz 4 MB 759.0 110.7 256 4,096 704.30 7

S20-2178 4 Apache 100 MHz 4 MB 759.0 221.4 256 4,096 704.30 7 S30-2320 4 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 998.6 215.1 512 8,909 927.70 7 S30-2321 8 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 1,794 386.4 1,024 12,288 927.70 7 S30-2322 8 Apache 125 MHz 4 MB 1,794 579.6 1,024 12,288 927.70 7 S40-2340 8 Northstar 262 MHz 8 MB 3,660 1,050 1,024 40,960 2,100.0 7,000 S40-2341 12 Northstar 262 MHz 8 MB 4,550 2,050 1,024 40,960 2,100.0 7,000 CISC V1R3 X

CISC V2R3 X eJump eJump

CISC V3R0.5 X X X X eJump

CISC V3R1 X X X X X eJump

CISC V3R2 X X X X

RISC V3R6 X X X

RISC V3R7 X X X

RISC V4R1 X X

RISC V4R2 X

V4R3 can interoperate with systems running V3R2, V3R7, V4R1, V4R2 & V4R3

V4R3 can create objects that can in turn be used by V3R2, V3R7, V4R1 & V4R2 systems

Version-to-version software upgrade charges apply for OS/400 and licensed programs

Figure 2: Salient characteristics of AS/400 and AS/400e RISC systems

OS/400 UPGRADE PATHS

CISC CISC CISC CISC RISC RISC RISC RISC RISC V2R3 V3R0.5 V3R1 V3R2 V3R6 V3R7 V4R1 V4R2 V4R3

Figure 3: The OS/400 upgrade table

Also Read

The Effects of COVID-19 on the IBM i Ecosystem

Dissecting the HelpSystems IBM i Marketplace Survey

IBM i Receives Package Manager Support