new platform. The Fort Knox project proved to be overly ambitious, and ran into multiple delays and changes of scope. As the project advanced, the requirement to support IBM 8100 and Series/1 software was dropped. When IBM's engineers attempted to port the operating systems and software of their existing platforms, they discovered that it would be impossible without making extensive changes to the Iliad processor for each individual operating system - changes which the Iliad's architects were unwilling to make. The proposed solution to this was to augment Iliad with operating system-specific co-processors which provided hardware support for a single operating system. However, the amount of logic needed in each co-processor grew until the co-processors became the main processor, and the Iliad was relegated to the role of a support processor - thus failing the goal of consolidating on a single processor architecture. The Fort Knox project was ultimately cancelled in 1985. Silverlake During the Fort Knox project, a skunkworks project was started at IBM Rochester by engineers who believed that Fort Knox's failure was inevitable. These engineers developed code which allowed System/36 applications to run on top of the System/38, and when Fort Knox was cancelled, this skunkworks project evolved into an official project to replace both the System/36 and System/38 with a single new hardware platform. The project became known as Silverlake (named for Silver Lake in Rochester, Minnesota) and officially began in December 1985. The Silverlake hardware was essentially an evolution of the System/38 which reused some of the technology developed for the Fort Knox project. Silverlake's goal was to deliver a replacement for the System/36 and System/38 in as short of a timeframe as possible, as the Fort Knox project had stalled new product development at Rochester, leaving IBM without a competitive midrange system. On its launch in 1986, the System/370-compatible IBM 9370 was positioned as IBM's preferred midrange platform, but failed to achieve the commercial success IBM hoped it would have. Much like Silverlake, the 9370 also reused the co-processor developed during the Fort Knox project as its main processor, and the same SPD I/O bus which was derived from the Series/1 bus. AS/400 On June 21, 1988, IBM officially announced the Silverlake system as the Application System/400 (AS/400). The announcement included more than 1,000 software packages written for it by IBM and IBM Business Partners. The AS/400 operating system was named Operating System/400 (OS/400).