What’s IBM going to announce regarding i 6.1 on Power7+ Hardware?

IBM wound up posting some info on tomorrow’s announcement on the DeveloperWorks Web site today, where they mention the Power7+ versions of the 710, 720, 730, 740, 750, and 760 rack servers. They also mentioned enhancements to the HMC and another IBM i 7.1 technology refresh: IBM i 7.1 TR6. Click here to read the announcement preview IBM posted today.

That’s cool. But here’s the passage that caught my eye and made me wonder whether native support for IBM i 6.1 on Power7+ is in the cards with this announcement.

Support of IBM i 6.1 with 6.1.1 machine code is still accommodated via virtual client only, meaning that the partition must have all of its I/O served by either an IBM i 7.1 partition or by VIOS, and that support will be available March 15, 2013. See IBM i I/O Support Details <<< Link to I/O details page coming soon >>> for information about a hardware feature for native I/O attach with IBM i 6.1.

So is IBM going to announce a hardware feature that allow i 6.1 to run natively under Power7+? Could be, according to this. I’m hoping we’ll see tomorrow. Can’t wait to hear what they mean by that, as an upcoming upgrade for one of my boxes possible involves running i 6.1 on a Power7+ box, maybe a 720.

More news as it develops.