MPE/iX Express releases are becoming the primary vehicle for introducing new HP 3000 operating system features. HP says its customers "prefer new functionality to be retrofitted onto their current releases, and they prefer to avoid major rolls of the operating system if they can," according to one CSY manager. In practice, that means the platform-level releases which were once the major places to first find new features -- like MPE/iX 5.0 or 5.5 -- are now becoming the software that consolidates previously released features.
In a word, platform releases appear to be doing the Express work, and vice-versa. And the delay of this fall's Express 3 may be evidence of the strain HP is experiencing in the job swap.
The strain exists because retrofitting new functionality onto Expresses has some challenges built into it. As a primary example, not all new functionality is Express material. "Some low level code -- like new I/O systems or many performance enhancements -- is very difficult or impossible to submit to an Express," according to CSY engineers. Other changes that are pervasive throughout the OS code also cannot be submitted to Expresses.
In such cases, HP must introduce the new functionality on a platform release, like the upcoming 6.0 MPE/iX scheduled for next summer. Multiple job queues will be introduced in 6.0, but such new features are becoming the exception that proves the rule. In addition, after a few years of Expresses, HP's patching processes is beginning to get overstrained. Dozens of patches emerged just since the release of MPE/iX 5.5 Express 2 this spring. Each must be checked and administered in a complex, interrelated process. And sometimes this process can be delayed by something as simple as a bad version of a patch which has a bug in the installation procedure -- something that delayed Express 3 again in late October.
HP always has the mainline releases available -- every 18 to 24 months -- to relieve the strain. Their engineers assure us that delays in Express releases don't always translate into subsequent delays in mainline releases. CSY usually has different people working on Expresses and platform releases, "but we have a natural tendency to give the next thing out the door all the attention it needs," according to one engineer. This can mean that releases further downline may have to relinquish people and resources temporarily.
Customers will get to measure the impact of these tradeoffs soon. The Express 4 release is scheduled to ship less than two months after Express 3 arrives in your mailboxes.