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IBM Leaks Details on New Mainframe
Mark writes "Big Blue inadvertently revealed details about its new z10 Enterprise Class mainframe set to launch on Feb. 26, as well as details on z/OS v1.10, a new version of the mainframe OS due out in September. 'According to an internal IBM document obtained by SearchDataCenter.com, the z10 Enterprise Class will come in five different models and feature 64-way chips, compared with the 54-way z9 mainframes and earlier 32-way models. In a conference call last month, IBM CFO Mark Loughridge told investors that the z10 would have 50% more capacity, which indicates that it will probably tap out at around 27,000 million instructions per second (MIPS) at the top end, compared with about 18,000 MIPS on the previous z9 Enterprise Class.'"
I am not buying one till they get that OS up to 3.0 at least.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Just imagine a beowulf cluster of these. It would make my head explode.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
How come they talk about thousands of MIPS instead of just saying GIPS?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
These mainframes use the z6 CPU, which is closely related to the POWER6, which is closely related to the PowerPC.
Is it at all possible to automatically port any nontrivial z6 software to PPC, if it doesn't require the actually different HW of the z6 (or its much higher performance)? Any possibility to run PPC SW on a z6, with some automatic porting for the higher performance?
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make install -not war
Nah, just a bunch of dual core chips. Take a look at the IBM Journal of Research and Development which has a lot of nice detail. Look at Vol. 48, No. 3/4 and Vol. 51, No. 1/2.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
They also support partitioning on the hardware level, so you can run z/OS or Linux virtual machines with almost no overhead (something you've been able to do since it was called System/370). You also have a huge amount more fault tolerance with a system like this (take a look at how many transistors on the CPUs are dedicated to error checking, and then start looking at the peripheral systems).
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You don't get out much do you? Mainframes are going strong in data centers that need high availability, fault tolerant, error correcting, massively parallel systems. There is also a LOT of old code that is still going strong on them. Their inherent ability to run multiple virtualized OSes is another strong suit.
Your math is also way off if you think 4 x86 cores outperform this. I'll leave you to do the proper calculations as your homework.
I work currently in an organization that uses mainframes. They are the z9 series - and honestly are some of the most useful things.
We use them due to ability operate in something called a sysplex. A sysplex is when multiple mainframes share data (known as DASD) and work together. When a mainframe is in a sysplex, you can do all sorts of things to the machine without having to bring your application down. These range from whole operating system upgrades to hardware maintenance and the end user will never see the impact. A sysplex literally is designed to be a 24x7 operation.
You can buy other types of machines that will be more powerful, faster or do operation x better, but it is hard to find a set of machines that are as stable and reliable as a mainframe is (and process millions of transactions per second).
Also, in terms of virtualization - a single mainframe on z/Linux can host many virtual linux servers - enough that you can save a substantial amount on power costs (my org estimated 400k a year in savings in terms of power alone - if the linux servers that are hosted individually on one of our distributed networks went to virtual on a mainframe).
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
I for one welcome our big and fast Cobol overlords.
Table-ized A.I.
I'll wait til it's dried off. Can't have a server that someone took a LEAK on...
Oh, maybe they made early RELEASE of details... I wonder, in IT context, how a vendor can "leak" its own details...
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In the mean time, IBM, Hitachi and a few others will be raking it in for you.
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I guess the IBM rep forgot to mention that a new one was one the way.
3-way? man, i'd settle for a 2-way, but usually just get a 1-way.
It wouldn't surprise me if the POWER7 either implements a superset of the POWER and System Z architectures, or has switchable decoders. Considering the fact that it's already possible to hot-plug CPUs on systems at this level, I can imagine a future IBM line where the hypervisor allows you to not only partition the system, but also decide which chips run in POWER and which in System Z mode dynamically, migrating virtual machines and restarting CPUs as required. That could be very attractive for customers wanting to consolidate mainframe, AIX, and Linux systems.
One of the design goals of the PowerPC instruction set (a superset of which is implemented by the POWER6) was to easily emulate x86. It would be really interesting if IBM would enhance this emulation support into the hypervisor, allowing customers to run legacy x86 Linux, Solaris or Windows Terminal Server virtual machines on their mainframes.
By the way, this mainframe is one of the big reasons why IBM are so keen on open source. If you run Linux and (portable) open source software then IBM can sell you a mainframe running Linux VMs when you start to outgrow your current infrastructure. The reason IBM owns so much of the (small, but incredibly lucrative) mainframe market was that in the '60s they pushed the predecessors to this system - System/360. They sold cheap minicomputers and high-end mainframes that ran exactly the same applications (and, with System/370, the mainframe could even run virtual minicomputers). They got people using the cheap minis and then presented them with a clear upgrade path. With open source, they can give people a really long upgrade path starting at commodity hardware and going as far up as they want.
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Z6 is nothing. I've used a Z80 before.
an ABEND is an 'abnormal end' Which is mainframespeak for when something dies :)
Their internal "bigtable" distributed database sounds like it needs better accuracy, but not their actual product.
It was supposed to be a joke. I think my humor coprocessor is broken :).
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Mainframes could share DASD *long* before the introduction of sysplex. Now - *parallel* sysplex, that's different - that's shared memory for things like DB2 lock structures, etc.
:)
I'm a mainframer from way back and I've got the grey hair to prove it.
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
Performance isn't the only issue at hand here. There's also reliability, integration, management, etc. I'm not intimately familiar with IBM mainframe technology, but I've learned enough from people who are to know these are incredibly reliable, and trusted machines. That's why they are used in financial industries, not merely their ability to handle large loads.
If you were to suggest to to a mainframe guy that he needs to upgrade to a cluster of Unix boxes, you'd get the same look you'd give someone suggesting you should upgrade to a rack of Dell servers. You all think the others are f'ing nuts for different reasons.
Yes, because you obsessively checking the apple.com site is proof that they're stable enough to run enormous and essential financial databases. Like parent said, there are a lot of transactions per second happening on this thing and they can't afford for it to mess up ever.
As far as using COBOL, it's because these programs are likely older than you.
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