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		News of 3000s in next year, and next century Dave Snow’s HP World talk about Platform Directions is always one of the most fact packed, and this year’s edition had dozens of topics squeezed in a very full hour. Snow reported that getting to the PA-8500 will be a matter of a box swap, not a board upgrade for 3000 sites, something that will happen beyond the Year 2000. The box will be ready for IA-64 boards, however. Closer to today, the next 9x9 system will be a board upgrade, pushing up the clock speed on the new PA-8200 chips in the just-announced 989. HP expects its highest-performing system to be a 12-way 997, sometime next year. One overlooked item is HP’s reduction in price for memory boards for the 9x9 line today; Snow said prices have come down 20-33 percent. HP is also developing a 512Mb memory module for release soon, to ultimately boost 3000 capacity to 16Gb-32Gb of RAM on the high end systems and 8Gb on the midrange. A change in MPE in the first half of 2000 will support files greater than 4Gb, both on 64-bit processors and non-64-bit processors. It will include KSAM support at first release. Snow said HP will support new RAM limits for the 997, 979 and 989 with 64-bit addressing for physical memory, “not user space, but physical memory. It appears that’s where the real need is at this point in time. If you’ve got your checkbook open, we’ll be glad to take your money for the memory.” The hardware could support the higher memory capacities today, but changes in MPE/iX are needed to make it happen. Expect to see greater memory capacity supported around the Year 2000. Copyright 1998 The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved