IBM has just released a new mainframe based on their new 5GHz 22nm Power8 based Processing Units with some models supporting up to 10TB of RAM, the minimum you can run is a mere 64GB. It can not only run IBM's zOS but is also capable of directly supporting Linux and can be managed with a Blade running Windows if you so desire. These fancy looking little mainframes are set up with drawers of either 39 or 42 PUs, so you can upgrade as your usage requires although 2 are actually spares and 6 are System Assist Processors, the remaining PUs can be assigned to varying roles as in previous IBM Z models. These machines are designed to handle large amounts of data traffic, providing real time encryption on up to 2.5 billion transactions per day. The Register feels that the most likely usage scenario will be to provide secure mobile data traffic, something which is certainly needed. You can also glean more information from this blog entry if you are curious about the architecture and capabilities of this mainframe.
"Of course, the proof of the pudding will be in the market, but IBM will be hoping that the billion dollars it's poured into developing the new z13 mainframe will get the big end of town as excited as Big Blue itself is."
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I’m more interested in seeing
I’m more interested in seeing where IBM’s(Via OpenPower) power8 licensees are going to do with their Powre8’s. For sure this IBM’s Z systems will be a powerful transactional processing system using its z196 5.2GHz CPUs(CISC), the Z processor is the descendent of the 360, not Power. Power/Power8 is a RISC design which IBM uses in servers, The Power8 outperforms Xeon is server workloads. One must distinguish IBMs mainframe SKUs, from its line of server SKUs(Power based), and Power8 is not exactly a PowerPC(PC, Laptop, NAS) SKU. IBM still has a very formidable line of mainframe(Z processors) computers, and the Power8, now that the design has been opened up for ARM style licensing, is going to play an even larger role in the third party server market, and probably workstation market as well.
Correction Z13, not Z196.
The
Correction Z13, not Z196.
The register needs to be more pedantic, and add notes to its articles for the mainframe non-aware, and always describe the Z series CPUs in more detail, otherwise confusion will ensue.
Additional note: this does
Additional note: this does not include the ancillary processors that IBM is using, which have been a verity of x86, PowerPC based channel I/O processors.
It should not look at that
It should not look at that good on the outside….concerns me lol.
I wonder what its RADAR cross
I wonder what its RADAR cross section looks like, and I’ll bet it can even run my old 360/370 assembly language projects, on one of the multitudes of VMs it can play host to. Everybody in the advanced assembly language class got their own VM way back in the day, that they were free to bork during runtime of their assignments. Lots of fun reading the dumps that shot out of the line printer, by the reams, while the days spent, with green card(a different type of green card, with ASCII, and EBCDIC, and powers of 2, and OP codes), trying to see what went wrong, and trying not to get “IEH Uptight”. Them were the days, whole days with no sleep, looking over miles of error dumps and trying not to go mad.
Always have to laugh when
Always have to laugh when someone assumes that because they haven’t seen a PC with IBM on it in the past decade the company must be going bust (not saying this article implies that but the belief is out there hence the title). IBM remains one of the most profitable tech companies out there, and year in year out generates the most patents and has the highest R&D budget in the industry. They just don’t don commodity hardware, so when something they produce becomes commodised (hard drives, PC’s, printers, etc) they drop it and focus on something else more profitable.
‘IBM has just released a new
‘IBM has just released a new mainframe based on their new 5GHz 22nm Power8 based Processing Units(…)’
Sorry, but AFAIK SystemZ was never using PowerCPU’s, SystemI(form. AS/i5) – yes, but here – this is completely different processor…
Ask our resident Power8
Ask our resident Power8 expert commentator for verification or read through the blog I linked to – http://blogs.realdolmen.com/experts/2015/01/14/z13-the-new-generation-of-ibm-z-systems/