[rescue] IBM question - what is RIOS an acronym for?

[Nathan Raymond]

Great question. I did a lot of searches just now, and if I had to guess it
was an internal code name that was picked up by the press (such as
InfoWorld). The "Mainframe Dictionary" maintained by Software Diversified
Services has this entry:

https://support.sdsusa.com/support/dictionary/r/

Rios:  IBM project which finally, in February 1990, produced the RS/6000,
> now part of eserver pSeries. Also used to refer to the architecture and the
> processor chip used in the RS/6000.


This "History of Microcomputers 1987-1990" has this entry:

https://emusee.org/comphis6.html

(month unknown), 1990: IBM unveils its new RISC-based workstation line, the
> RS/6000. Development work had been done under code name "America" for the
> RISC chip research, and "RIOS" for systems using the America technology.
> The architecture of the systems is given the name POWER, standing for
> Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC.
>

This "27 Years of IBM RISC" page mentions it this way:

http://ps-2.kev009.com/rootvg/column_risc.htm

1985 America
> Based on the experimental design of the 801 and ACS ideas the development
> laboratory in Austin completed a first prototype, where it evolved into the
> superscalar (Instructions are handled paralel) RISC System/6000 (RS/6000)
> processor that was introduced into the market in 1990. Development work had
> been done under code name "America" for the RISC chip research, and "RIOS"
> for systems using the America technology.
>

Wikipedia covers it this way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Power_microprocessors

The America project
> In 1985, research on a second-generation RISC architecture started at the
> IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, producing the "AMERICA architecture".
> In 1986, IBM Austin started developing the RS/6000 series computers based
> on that architecture. This was to become the first POWER processors using
> the first POWER ISA.
>

POWER
> The first IBM computers to incorporate the POWER ISA are the RISC
> System/6000 or RS/6000 series. They were released in February 1990. These
> RS/6000 computers were divided into two classes, POWERstation workstations
> and POWERserver servers. The first RS/6000 CPU has 2 configurations, called
> the "RIOS-1" and "RIOS.9" (or more commonly the POWER1 CPU). A RIOS-1
> configuration has a total of 10 discrete chips: an instruction cache chip,
> fixed-point chip, floating-point chip, 4 data L1 cache chips, storage
> control chip, input/output chips, and a clock chip. The lower cost RIOS.9
> configuration has 8 discrete chips: an instruction cache chip, fixed-point
> chip, floating-point chip, 2 data cache chips, storage control chip,
> input/output chip, and a clock chip.
>

Wikipedia doesn't attempt to unpack RIOS beyond that.

If you go to IBM's archives, there is no mention of RIOS in "A Brief
History of RISC, the IBM RS/6000 and the IBM eServer pSeries" or in
"Dictionary of IBM and Computing Terminology", which backs up the idea that
it was more of an internal code name:

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/documents/index.html

GCC documentation refers to it here as both the "'rios' chip set" and as a
cpu_type to be passed to the -mcpu option:

https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.3.6/gcc/RS_002f6000-and-PowerPC-Options.html

Going back to an article before the RS/6000 came out (Jan 22, 1990), it was
mentioned this way:

https://techmonitor.ai/technology/ibms_rios_takes_role_of_spectre_at_uniforum_feast

The biggest no-show at the UniForum show which opens in Washington today –
> unless IBM changes it’s mind in a hurry or decides to hide the thing
> somewhere off-stand – is IBM’s forthcoming Rios Unix family, which
> according to InfoWorld will be called the System/6000 Power family...
>

I thought for sure the Computer History Museum would have something, but
there wasn't much in the "IBM 801 Microprocessor Oral History Panel":

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102740048

They talk about America:

P. Markstein: The RS/6000, which we named America, because John said nobody
> would dare kill a project named America. <laughter>
> ...
>

and just mention RIOS:

Oehler: I don't have any clear vision of what happened. Sometimes I just
> don't remember some of the detail. But the thing about the 6000 going to PC
> was that was another revolution in the architecture in things that we had
> another opportunity to fix before we got to the full RIOS, the RS/6000
> machine.
>

 Someone who worked at IBM must know though?

- Nate

On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 9:12 AM Scott Quinn via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org>
wrote:

> When you look at older POWER articles/documentation they sometimes use the
> acronym RIOS instead to refer to the processor, but I haven't found what it
> stands for yet. Anyone know?
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
>
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