IBM Launches Mainframe Computer, Gears Up for Hybrid CPUs

IBM's mainframe computer has just been officially launched and the company is currently planning on implementing the latest open-source software as well as multi-threading or hybrid processor technologies. IBM's new mainframe, the System z10 is the company's first to be built around a quad-core chip especially tailored for the machine and runs at a blazing speed of 4.4 GHz.

According to the company, the new mainframe computer performs twice as fast as the Z9 predecessors. IBM engineers claim that the computer can match the performance of 1,500 x86 servers, while using 85 percent less power and physical space. The System z10 mainframe will be powered by OpenSolaris, an open source operating system developed by Sun Microsyestems.

"We have it running internally, but there's more work to be done to clean it up and optimize its use of the underlying hardware before we are ready for an end-user beta program," said Jim Porell, chief architect of zSeries software and an IBM distinguished engineer. "We're also looking at what will be the middleware and applications for the rest of the stack," he added.

Currently, the company uses a proprietary distribution of the z/OS operating system on the mainframe, but it would like to maximize the compatibility between the computer and the open-source code currently on the market. According to Porell, IBM conducted a poll that revealed that users are running 28 percent more Linux and 47 percent more Java workloads on the zSeries in 2007 as compared to 2006.

The Z10's technical sheets reveal that the computer can use up to 64 processors built on the quad-core architecture. Its previous versions would only allow up to 54 chips running at a maximum speed of 2 GHz each. The custom processors in the mainframe are built using a new core architecture, yet they do not support multithreading. However, Porell claims that the company engineers are working on a multithreaded version of the chip.