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Is IBM’s New Z10 Mainframe a Big Deal?
By John | February 26, 2008
In a word … YES …
Here’s why:
- The z10 uses up to 64 - 4.4GHz quad-core processors.
- The Z10 supports up to 1.5TB of available memory.
- The z10 is 50% faster than the z9 and 100% faster for CPU intensive jobs.
- The Z10 is as powerful as 1,500 x86 servers but uses 85 percent less power and space.
- The Z10 processor supports the CISC z/Architecture and each core has a 64 kB (64 KiB) instruction and 128 kB data L1 caches, 3 MB (3 MiB) L2 cache and accelerators for cryptography, data compression and decimal floating point arithmetic.
- The Z10 supports 894 unique instructions, 75% of which are implemented entirely in hardware.
- IBM claims that the Z10 will most likely be the first IBM mainframe to run OpenSolaris, from Sun Microsystems. They have been running OpenSolaris internally but they are cleaning it up before they run a first beta. They already run the zLinux an Z/OS operating systems on the Z10.
- The Z series are the only servers on the planet that have achieved EAL5 level of certification for security and partitions (through the System z9 with plans in place to apply for EAL5 for the System z10).
- IBM has been working tirelessly getting universities to adopt zSeries in their curriculum and has recently announced a new milestone as it topped the 400th University participating in the program around the world (up from 23 universities in the program in 2004).
- IBM also announced a Cognos 8 BI for Linux on System z customer beta program. General availability of the software is set for the second half of this year.
