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IBM Mainframe Running World's Fastest Commercial Processor
dcblogs writes "IBM's new mainframe includes a 5.5-GHz processor, which may be the world's fastest commercial processor, say analysts. This new system, the zEnterprise EC12, can also support more than 6-TB of flash memory to help speed data processing. The latest chip has six cores, up from four in the prior generation two years ago. But Jeff Frey, the CTO of the System Z platform, says they aren't trading off single-thread performance in the mainframe with the additional cores. There are still many customers who have applications that execute processes serially, such as batch applications, he said. This latest chip was produced at 32 nanometers, versus 45 nanometers in the earlier system. This smaller size allows more cache on the chip, in this case 33% more Level-2 cache. The system has doubled the L3 and L4 cache over the prior generation."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_z196_(microprocessor)
Palm trees and 8
Why does the article not mention the name of the CPU?
You're probably not buying one at tigerdirect anytime soon, so it doesn't really matter.
It does run linux, which is kinda cool.
http://www.debian.org/ports/s390/
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
...gives me a bit of a cognitive dissonance sensation. It shouldn't, really, but it does. Is it just me?
How does the L4 cache in these processors work? Generally going to anything off die is going to induce a major latency penalty due to the need to go through a driver stage which can handle outside interference. How can they make the L4 cache fast enough that its small size doesn't make it basically pointless versus just going to main memory?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
That's a Ming Mecca chip. Those aren't even declassified yet!
So it was my understanding that part of the reason consumer CPUs didn't tend to go above 3-4GHz was that, at those speeds, the electrons can't actually move through the wires fast enough. Specifically for doing memory reads -- at 5.5GHz, I'm calculating about 4cm per clock cycle -- which may be further than the memory is physically located on a normal desktop PC. Meaning it would take not just two, but possibly three or four clock cycles to read a value from main memory.
Granted, on a server, main memory may be closer to the CPU, and the added cache will help as well. But I'm also mostly a software guy -- anyone with some more computer engineering knowledge have any information about this? Is the memory closer? Are they just taking longer to read? And if so is that likely to impact performance significantly (such that this wouldn't be as significant of a gain from 3GHz-5.5GHz as, say, 1GHz-2GHz?)
But their chip isn't overclocked to near death and using a nitrogen cooler. So I've no idea how your comparison works. The headline may as well read "Ford make fastest road car" so you can say but it isn't as fast as a car you've have converted to use a jet engine and drag racing tires.
So, you're comparing a ridiculous configuration of a nitrogen-cooled, over-clocked processor that will maybe run long enough to get a screen shot of it running, to a commercial processor that is designed to run at that speed non-stop for years and years? Yeah, that makes sense.
They claimed "faster", not "more powerful"; clock frequency is the only thing they need to reference for that claim.
Oh no... it's the future.
No, they aren't claiming that. Clock speed is still extremely important, though, and nobody else except IBM has figured out how to hit these high gigahertz numbers, much less within power and cooling constraints. What's all the more impressive is that IBM does it at mainframe service qualities, i.e. this machine runs continuously at 5.5 GHz without shutting off cores, without "burst" mode, and without weird/exotic stuff like cryogenics that might keep a chip running long enough for a screenshot. It's just balls out performance on every thread -- and there's a definitely a market for that. Nobody else is left doing this computer engineering, bless them. Also check their cache sizes (obscenely huge), out-of-order execution, pipelining, crypto and decimal floating point in every core, extremely complex instructions like transactional execution.... This z CPU is a gorgeous piece of engineering in every way. And no, you can't run an entire large bank (for example) on your laptop.
Why does the article not mention the name of the CPU? Is only its clock speed faster, or also its execution? Can we also use this CPU in consumer computers or is this for IBM Mainframes?
No. They obviously want to profit from high speed trading.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Except the 5.5GHz may not be all that fast, as the Z-line of CPUs are the old IBM 360 instruction set, which is is so large, complex, and baroque that it is mostly usually implemented through a thick layer of microcode.
So 5.5GHz may be the speed of the microcode level, the actual "machine instructions" may be a considerable sub-multiple of that.
How about a price list in TFS for budget planning?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
There are some engineering tricks I've seen IBM use which are pretty cool. Take the POWER7 CPU line for example. You can disable every other core, allowing the cores that are operational use the cache of the cores that are not on. This gives not just cache, but allows a higher clock speed. Of course, this feature is mainly used to deal with applications which are licensed by the hardware cores present.
Mainframes are probably one of the most underutilized tools out there. However, for performance per square foot in the data center, they are hard to beat these days.
Of course, the biggest advantage: It isn't x86. With virtually everything running on the x86 or amd64 platform, all it would take is an undocumented instruction similar to the F0 0F bug that happens to give ring 0 access, and virtually the whole world is vulnerable with absolutely zero way of protecting against it except reaching for the network cable or power switch.
Laptop chips? Please. We're moving away from that. The tradition these days is to compare everything to your cell phone-- Your cell phone beats the pants of a Cray, and so on.
5.5Ghz probably makes it about as fast as a 2 year old intel machine. I should know, I have a z114 (previous generation at 3.8Ghz) that i've done extensive benchmarks on. The fact that IBM refuses to publish standard benchmark numbers (specCPU, specVM, etc) should be sufficient proof that they are not pretty.
I can say that the people buying these things are pretty much smoking some fine IBM drugs. Sure, they are actually fairly competitive (but still not class leading) on the high end, but on the low end, which starts at ~200k, after disks and licenses, for 26 MIPS are abysmal. At that price/performance hercules on a midrange desktop PC doing software emulation (and its not even JIT'ed) runs somewhere between 5-15x as fast.
A 26 MIP mainframe is roughly equal to a Pentium 90. A full blown 3.8 Ghz z114 is roughly equal to a 5 year old x86 server.
Worse yet, is FICON, which generally is just a giant layer of inefficiency sitting in front of standard SCSI/SAS disks. So, the IO numbers are pretty abysmal too.
Basically, you have to spend >$400k before the mainframe catches up to what you can do on your desktop with a free emulator.
If your running linux on z, then your really deluded. In fact, your probably better off taking the HMCs, SEs, and CUs that it comes with and running linux on them directly. The only minor saving grace is that IBM doesn't rape people for unlocked processors to run linux (IFL's).
Further, IBM's claims of easier manageability are a joke. I can install ESXi and a half dozen linux machines, in the time it takes an expert system programmer to setup the HCD, install z/vm, and start configuring a linux machine. Oh, and I can migrate the image with a couple mouse clicks. Plus, I don't have to manage my data stores as a bunch of tiny disk images because zOS still prefers to deal with mod3 (~3GB) and mod9 (~9GB) disk partitions. I literally have a few hundred partitions on a machine with just a couple TB of storage. If you think managing a few dozen vmware disks is a problem, multiply it by 3-8x on z to run linux.
Frankly, if you have cobol, JCL, whatever running on these things and your not desperately trying to migrate to another platform, then your must either be extremely rich, or really stupid. The maintenance costs alone over ten years is going to save 7 figure sums, which should more more than enough to hire a couple programmers and a system administrator to port and maintain the apps on a machine that costs $20k every 5 years.
They make very few thousands of the really high-end stuff like this. You can bet every dollar you have that these will execute faster. Multinational corporations don't shell out $20M for a mainframe upgrade without knowing exactly what they're getting. L3 cache is 48GB. <== not a typo. There's an outboard L4 cache that's much larger. They've got bandwidth that can feed that beast: they were built to handle TB/s of just I/O bandwidth, not including CPU access to the data, something like a decade ago.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
We could have gotten some meaningful benchmarks. According tho this Register arcticle
Back when TurboHercules was still around, in 2009, Tom Lehmann claimed
On the other hand, if your old and creaky code can't be divvied up among a multiplicity of cores, the existence of a far cheaper 64 core, 8 way Nehelem EX machine (or its current equivalent) that's almost as fast as a single zEC12 core doesn't much matter.
Finally someone who gets it, the x86 monoculture is the single most dangerous thing in the computing landscape today.
Monoculture is bad (remember potatoes in Ireland), it has always been bad and will always be bad.
And no, it won't be better if x86 monoculture is replaced by ARM monoculture. Well, there will more choice of foundries, not just Intel and AMD (that Intel could kill but does not for fear of being scrutinized even more by antitrust authorities).
OK, here's a benchmark. You're welcome to try running an entire large bank (for example) on one server -- your choice. OK, two servers: I'll allow you one additional for off-site disaster recovery of all development, test, and production workloads, including concurrent batch and online, for all the bank's security zones. Choose wisely, Grasshopper.
You make it seem like IBM is unique. Yes they are, but not in the way you implied. Mainframes are expensive beasts with essentially no limits in cooling running (in many cases) legacy code stacks that can't be (or at least will not be) updated. They are using expensive techniques like ceramic MCM or Multi Chip Modules each ceramic substrate likely costing more than even an Intel top of the line processor. They are using a huge amount of connector on the order of 5x more than the before mentioned top of the line Intel processor in order to feed the processors with power and data.
The closest relative to this level of effort is the supercomputers of yesterday. Todays supercomputers doesn't even compare...
Intel could very well have their 8-10GHz Pentium 4(5?) now if they had continued on that path. I for one like their current processor line better.
I'll believe their claims when I see some test results they can back it up with.
"L3 cache is 48GB. == not a typo"
Not a typo, still wrong. Those L3 caches tend to be in the 12-24MB range and even that is usually shared by the cores. The off-chip L4 cache is in the dozens to hundreds of MB.
Yes, you could do that. Multiple images, actually. And that's basically what these servers do automatically. There are 4 levels of cache, main memory (which is RAID-protected actually, called RAIM -- only IBM does that), and there's another optional level of directly processor-addressable memory called Flash Express which is nonvolatile -- that's new, too. It works particularly well for fast paging, in-memory databases, memory dumps, etc. Then you go into fiber-attached and heavily cached solid state disk, fast disk, nearline disk, tape libraries. There are a lot of storage layers, and they're all very big.
Entry level z114 is indeed 26 mips for $75000.
http://www.tech-news.com/publib/pl2818.html
Which is a joke surely? $400,000 will get you 330 mips, which is erm, surely a mistake???!! It's way way too low:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second
Core i7 is 177,730 MIPS at 3.3 Ghz.
What exactly are you basing your claims on? Just pulling things out of thin air?
Here are some things that IBMs customers care about, where are the Core i7 Extreme numbers for these?
How many CICS transactions can I process per second? How many IMS updates? How about DB2 transactions? How many SSL transactions? What differences are there in performance for on-line vs batch processing? Can I tune the system to maximize performance for my particular workload?
So you don't like my benchmark then and want another benchmark? OK. I chose a perfectly reasonable benchmark: number of servers (X) to deliver a particular real-world business outcome, where smaller X is better. A benchmark is simply a measurement to assess particular criteria (such as X) against a particular outcome (such as running a bank). I can agree that that an IBM zEnterprise EC12 server is not the answer to every IT problem. It is, however, the answer to many. And if you can't agree to that, then you simply have more to learn. (How exciting!)
With flash memory you read a block, flip some bits, and write it back to modify that block. Not only that, but Flash memory will wear out after so many reads and writes. That would be devistating to a CPU.
Well, if so -- no idea, really -- then run UnixBench on an Intel Xeon. I see that IBM sells those, too, as it happens. Now how does UnixBench help me run my business better, more securely, more reliably, etc? I've never worked for a business (or government) that runs UnixBench to solve any real business problem(s).
No, your correction is partially incorrect. It's 384MB of L4 cache minimum up to 1.5GB maximum per zEC12.
L3 is 48MB, (see p. 43), not GB as The Register had it, thanks for noticing that.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
No, no typo. There's indeed Flash Express -- and yes, IBM's engineers have figured out a way to add yet another memory tier using (very high quality) flash memory. The processor can directly address it -- it's all mapped within the 64-bit virtual address space from what I've read. Yes, it's slower than DRAM but it's faster than storage-attached SSD (which at least has a longer distance to travel). Flash Express is great for things like paging, memory dumps, gigantic in-memory databases, and certain things that Java wants, so that's how operating systems and databases will use it. IBM even encrypts everything that lands on this memory-addressable flash, just in case someone tries to physically rip it out of the server. (Yes, they thought of that.)
Hmmm, six cores with each running at 1 ghz equals 6 ghz with a 5% overhead makes it 5.7 ghz maximum... IBM Marketing!!!!
And the published information supporting your assumption that the cores are only running at 1GHz, and the 5.7 GHz comes from multiplying the clock rate by the number of cores and subtracting 5% as overhead, rather than each core truly running at 5.7 GHz, is?
What if Intel had continued boosting clock speed (within power and cooling constraints) and employed other improvements? IBM has done both, and I applaud that. It's important to them (and to many of their customers) that they keep working hard to improve the performance of each thread, and, golly, they keep pulling rabbits out of the hat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_z196_(microprocessor)
Actually, the z196 is the microprocessor in the previous generation. An IBM paper on the zEC12 refers to the new microprocessor as the "zEC12 processor chip" or just "the zEC12 chip". As they're not selling it on the open market, there's not much reason to give the processor chip its own name, independent from the name of the systems in which it's being used.
This ius what I've seen woring in a mainframe shop as well. The performance is not great, and the OS and tools were horrid (this is z/OS, not Linux). The costs were astonomical for the performance as well. The only thing they can really clain is very good reliability, but in the end, it's human error that gets you every time. We had well administered Windows servers running database, etc, that were kicking the mainframe's ass in both performance and in uptime (systems, not hardware). If you never change *anything* that might cause problems, you'll have a great uptime, but so would a cluster of linux boxes, with better price and performance. There are very few workloads where a mainframe is a benefit, and the only thing keeping most peple there is the difficulty in leaving, requiring re-writing software and tools.
OK, let's put some of this stupidity to rest.
First, nobody who knows anything uses MIPS to compare perfomance between two different architectures. MIPS is only marginally useful in the best of conditions, and even then is only useful as a relative measure between two machines of the same architecture running the same workload.
Second, Core i7 servers execute 178 BILLION instructions every second, on average? Seriously? 80 instructions per clock cycle, sustained? Bullshit.
Third, your nice shiny rack of Core i7 servers doesn't mean anything if it can't run your software.
Fourth, the actual performance of a Z114 processor is around 780 MIPS, not 26. So why do they have that 26 MIPS 'dialed down' model? Because some customer asked for it. Why would a customer pay $800K for a 780 MIPS machine when he only has 26 MIPS of workload? Why would the customer pay software licensing fees for a 780 MIPS machine when he only has 26 MIPS of workload?
Fifth, 'your experience' with IBM mainframes is non-existant, or you wouldn't be making these stupid mistakes and claims.
Long live CICS!
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
Your 177730 MIPS figure is mirrored by this wikipedia page. Using the same criteria, 30 MIPS is around a 33 MHz 80486,or perhaps even a 68040.
Unless you have an irrational suspicion of IBM, it's fairly reasonable to assume that a mainframe MIP is not a Dhrystone MIP.
CPU isn't the single item with mainframes. Mainframes tend to have large I/O buses, and that is something that tends to be forgotten about when people talk about CPU power.
Mainframes are designed to do business tasks, be it CICS operations, DB2 transactions, or other integer based operations that require tons of data going in and tons of data going out at a time. This is why IBM has such a good caching design. Having the ability to get the numbers into and out of the CPUs is what mainframes are designed to do.
If someone expects top notch floating point operations, expect to be disappointed. MIPS and sheer bus bandwidth rule the roost when it comes to this section of computing.
But such businesses likely exist -- those business whose real business problem is selling processors and whose processors run UnixBench very well.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Points 1,2,3 apply to this chip too. At the end of the day,its a chip running Linux timeslices and Java. It can be benchmarked and it can be compared. Even if IBM runs away from comparisons.
Point 4, The table lists an entry server of 26 MIPS for $75000 which will buy you a big rack of Corei7s. You mention 780 MIPS, the register article (mentioned in a comment lower down) estimates 1600 for the top of the range chip. i.e. 1% of the processing power of the i7.
Presumably that's a top of the range price in millions, but lets ignore that for a second.
If I switched computers to this IBM mainframe, from its current rack of 4 Corei7s I would have 0.25% of the processing power. I would firstly probably ditch the integrity checks, and security checks, they're expensive to calculate and I don't have the processing power. If the floating point is as bad as the MIPs then I would probably have to switch some of the calculations from float to integers or fixed point math, and round, again with lots of problems and contractual headaches. I would calculate the bill less often and not be able to update the live online bill, again a result of the lack of processing power. We would raise prices, this is due to the high cost of the mainframe.
The consequence of vague claims, not backed up by hard reality would be devastating.
After a lot of vague talk from you, when forced to you finally make a benchmark claim. 780MIPS and its pitiful, even if it was a $1000 computer it would be pitiful.
I'm now wondering if my tablet PC (Asus tf700 quad core 1.6Ghz) is faster than your mainframe, because these numbers from you and others who've benchmarked IBM kit, are sooo low.
I would argue that the jump from machine code to assembly to C is much smaller than the jump from C to lisp/bash/perl/prolog
Multinational corporations don't shell out $20M for a mainframe upgrade without knowing exactly what they're getting.
uh, they tend to exactly shell out the money without knowing exactly what they're getting since they're contracting the decision out anyhow.
sure, it would be nice if the whole db fitted on the cache on the cpu.. but uh, you're not getting 48gb of on-die cache of course. you're not going to get that for 20 mil.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The x86_64 cpus support a mode called x32 where they use the 64-bit CPU mode but with 32-bit pointers. The hardware supports it, but there is relatively little software support. A Linux port is currently in progress.
Mainframes are probably one of the most underutilized tools out there. However, for performance per square foot in the data center, they are hard to beat these days.
I really don't believe you are right about that. The core density of mainframes is rather sad compared to Google-style densely packed rack mounts. You can only fit about 100 user accessible processors in one mainframe, which gives you around 600 cores. You can easily fit 800 x86 cores in a standard 42U rack, even with bog-standard 1U servers while leaving room for switches and cooling, and you can more than double that if footprint is your main concern. In contrast, that mainframe won't fit in a standard 19" rack footprint AND it requires separate space for the management console.
If you are mainly running batch jobs, the lack of CPU performance of the mainframe likely won't matter and the enormous I/O capacity is very difficult to achieve in the x86 space. In that case you may well be right that the mainframe wins on performance per square foot.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Wrong. See http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3078075&cid=41151983
MODS: mod it down until it is at score 1 (no need to go to -1 and burn the guy's Karma).
And to jthill: nothing personal.
MIPS is only marginally useful in the best of conditions, and even then is only useful as a relative measure between two machines of the same architecture running the same workload.
I rather suspect that "MIPS", these days, doesn't measure the how many millions of instructions a processor executes per second. I don't know what the "MIPS" figures for IBM mainframes count, but the figure everybody's quoting for the Core i7 processor is "Dhrystone MIPS", which, as the Wikipedia article says, is "obtained when the Dhrystone score is divided by 1757 (the number of Dhrystones per second obtained on the VAX 11/780, nominally a 1 MIPS machine". Unless the "MIPS" figure for IBM mainframes represents Dhrystone MIPS, and I rather suspect it doesn't, comparing the IBM mainframes "MIPS" figures with the Dhrystone "MIPS" figure is, as you note, bogus. Comparing zEC12 Dhrystone "MIPS" with Core i7 Dhrystone "MIPS" might be more meaningful, modulo the benchmarking limitations of Dhrystone.
Second, Core i7 servers execute 178 BILLION instructions every second, on average? Seriously? 80 instructions per clock cycle, sustained?
Nope. As per the above, what they do is run Dhrystone, as compiled with some compiler with some particular set of options, about 117,000 times faster than a VAX-11/780 ran Dhrystone, as compiled with some other compiler with some particular set of options. I don't know whether there's any information on how much faster than a VAX-11/780 a zEC12 can run Dhrystone; I would not be surprised to hear that it's somewhere in the 50,000 to 150,000 range.
Here are some things that IBMs customers care about, where are the Core i7 Extreme numbers for these?
How many CICS transactions can I process per second? How many IMS updates?
Well, you're unlikely to get numbers for the first of those, given that IBM apparently killed off CICS for Windows and I'm not sure which x86 UN*Xes, if any, got versions of CICS. I'm not sure to what extent TXSeries for Multiplatforms would let you, for example, run CICS on Windows Server or Linux.
As for the second, as far as I know, IBM's never ported IMS to any non-mainframe OS.
How about DB2 transactions?
About 13,000 XML transactions per second in at least one benchmark - but those were Xeons, not Cores (server rather than desktop/laptop processors).
Well, yes, that was my point. The workloads run on mainframes are different than the workloads run on other processors. Therefore, there are no benchmarks which can be accurately used to compare them.
These people that keep harping on the 'IBM won't do benchmarks' theme are completely missing the point. It is like saying that because GE Locomotives does not publish 'MPG' or '0 to 60' figures that means that they are hiding something and that obviously a Toyota is a better vehicle. Well, where are the 'fuel consumed per 1000 ton/miles' measurements for Toyota?
IBM gets the speed because cost is no option. Here is how they do it.
1. Low yield. These chips have a very large die size so the yield is going to be lower but the price is high so the trade off works.
2. Binning. The slower chips will go into the lower end machines that use the Z114.
3. Multi chip modules again to allow careful selection and improved yields.
4. Crazy levels of cooling. These have the very best cooling they can fit.
5. Professional operators, maintenance, and construction. The entire machine will be built like an expensive watch from the cooling to the memory system. The operators will follow all the procedures and if something is not perfect they will call IBM to send out a tech if the computer didn't do it.
Other companies know how IBM does this they just do not have the resources in place to compete with IBM in this market. Instead they go for the easier lower hanging fruit.
Too bad IBM blew it with the PC. If they had not been under extreme anti-trust pressure and had faith that PC where going to take off they could have used a 16 bit version of the System 360 ISA for the CPU maybe based on the 360/20 or maybe the 22.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's a matter of intended load. Yes, the mainframe looks bad when it is running a benchmark intended for a GP CPU. However, let the Xeon run a massive out of cache application and watch it spend most of it's time waiting on memory.
Kinda like your typical passenger car easily leaves a dump truck in the dust when the light turns green until you try it with 20 tons of rocks in your trunk.
Well, yes, that was my point. The workloads run on mainframes are different than the workloads run on other processors.
Some workloads run on mainframes are different from the workloads run on other systems. A workload using software that only runs on, say, z/OS would be such a workload, as per my comment on IMS.
Other workloads are run on many different types of large systems, whether the processors happen to execute a descendant of the System/360 instruction set and the I/O subsystem happens to run S/3x0-style channel programs or not. DB2 workloads could be such a workload, as per my comment on DB2.
You don't even try to make sense.
Please go troll somewhere else.
And by the way, my Karma is good.
Generally, the larger the memory system the longer the memory latency. Hence the need for larger caches. The one thing the z does bring to the table is extremely large caches. Which helps a lot if you are sitting in that range between fitting in cache or not. The problem is (at least with the previous generation CPU) is that the memory latency is not as good as you assume. You can't throw money at the latency problem, like you can with the bandwidth or capacity ones.
From what I can tell from my z114 the memory latency isn't anything to write home about. Its ok, but its is _NOT_ better than my mid range DL380's. So your example sort of sucks. In fact with x86 servers the fewer sockets you have generally translates to better latency because the data has to be transferred over the QPI or HT links. So if you app is bound by memory latency you actually want a smaller machine (unless you get small enough your hitting disk...).
Seriously? 80 instructions per clock cycle, sustained? Bullshit.
Thats caused by people multiplying the single core numbers by the core/thread count. You can easily buy an 80 core x86's (HP DL980G7). Which leaves the IPC at only 1 (using your number of 80 IPC), which is probably actually really low for that machine considering the cores are super-scalar, and its hyperthreaded.
That is in fact what IBM does with their zseries too, the single core numbers are only like 1.3k MIPS, times 64 or whatnot for the bigger configurations.
When you can find a Xeon with OVER 1 GIG of cache, my example will suck. That's a BIG window for apps that go out of cache on a Xeon but not on a z CPU.
There's still plenty of reason to go with the Xeon, of course. If you have apps that stay reasonably in cache for a Xeon (and there are plenty) or you don't happen to have a few million burning a hole in your pocket (sadly, very common), the Xeon is a good choice.
Actually, it has that too now: IBM introduced hardware decimal floating point in 2008 to its mainframes (IEEE754-2008). Only IBM seems to have done that (on POWER7 as well). The zEC12 has that on every core; crypto too.
reliability too.
mainframes generally run in high availability and high uptime enviroments.
you want five nines, you want a mainframe.
a cluster of x86s might reach the same performance specs for a fraction of the price, but it won't give you the same reliability.
"Intel could very well have their 8-10GHz Pentium 4(5?) now if they had continued on that path. I for one like their current processor line better."
with minimal performance gain, and increase in power.
POWER7 runs at 4.25 GHz under 45nm design rules so 5.2 GHz or 5.5 GHz in a more expensive machine using a better manufacturing process with better system cooling does not seem impossible. PCs use air cooling and are supposed to have lower power consumption so of course the clock rates are not so high. Still there are Intel Ivy Bridge desktop CPUs sold that hit 3.9 GHz on Turbo mode and server CPUs that hit 4.1 GHz on Turbo mode.
The don't use nitrogen but they use water cooling.
Absolutely, I am not saying that mainframes don't have a role or that people are stupid for buying them. Mainframes are great at what they do, and almost every time high-end Unix boxes "steal" a reliability or I/O-performance feature from mainframes, the mainframe people seem to invent a new one.
I am only saying that if your primary need is a lot of CPU in a small amount of space, without requiring I/O or reliability or the other benefits of a mainframe, you should not buy a mainframe. However, the number of people who impulse buy a mainframe based on what they read in a Slashdot post is likely low.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
It is fairly trivial for white-box clusters to reach five nines. When was Google's last downtime?
x86 is not a monoculture. That is an absurd claim.
All problems with the x86 instruction set have lay in its implementation, which differs wildly from processor set to processor set. The implementations of the ISA may have security issues, but there is no inherent insecurity in the x86 instruction set.
toresbe
selling it on the open market...
I'll bet they will sell them to you, but if you have to ask the cost, you can't afford one.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
The closest relative to this level of effort is the supercomputers of yesterday.
The closest relative to these machines are the IBM Power Systems systems (think Watson). The smallest Power Systems system, with the right software, is suitable for a 10-employee business.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
Aside from the Apples to Oranges comparison that others have pointed out, which current CPU do you think is the fastest CPU out there? Core i7? POWER7? Itanium? Some MIPS or Sparc? Which one? And just equalizing their frequencies is not valid - one of the CPUs has far more registers, pipelines and cache than the other, so how would you equalize those?
correct.
If you want total compute power firefower supremecy, you want a "super computer" not a mainframe.
Whats more powerful a race car or a semi truck?
a race car would be a super computer, the semi would be mainframe.
"However, the number of people who impulse buy a mainframe based on what they read in a Slashdot post is likely low."
you can't exactly walk into microcenter and buy one.