http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/ Engadget Comments for IBM's zEnterprise architecture makes mainframes cool again, also efficient (video) http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 7:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/How the hell do you cool 96 5.2GHz cores??]]>Jul 23rd 2010 8:44AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 11:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 7:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/I don't think even Crysis could really challenge this type of machine. Instead what you could do is have your entire LAN party playing Crysis against each other in separate virtual machines. Now that's a serious gaming machine. ]]>Jul 23rd 2010 8:13AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Wouldn't that be something!]]>Jul 23rd 2010 8:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 8:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 9:15AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
Actually it probably can't play Crysis well, I doubt it has much in the way of a video card :( All CPU, no GPU... Boourns]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 2:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
:O]]>Jul 23rd 2010 7:49AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
Still generate (and therefore must dissipate) the same amount of heat. Water cooling just makes it more efficient at getting the heat into the air.]]>Jul 23rd 2010 7:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 8:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
Unless the mainframes radiator can be mounted outside or in another room, directing the radiator's heat does not matter. The rooms AC unit will still have to overcome the same amount of heat whether the mainframe is air or water cooled. Think about it....]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 2:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 7:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 8:06AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/And I will correct that in fact the intel/power/cell blades are not install INSIDE the mainframe but in a frame next to the mainframe.]]>Jul 23rd 2010 8:16AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/One cool thing you can do is boot up thousands of VM Linux instances. So, instead of having thousands of PC boxes sitting around, you can have thousands of users compiling their own kernels and booting them up.
This ain't no toy. ;-)]]>Jul 23rd 2010 8:17AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
We have 3 z9 business class mainframes, and we use them for revenue accounting, database ops, inline applications and backend computing. One of our frames carries over 9 billion instructions a second, running at bus speed with storage IOPS over fibre.

We just call them the huge, black mystery machine in the department of expensive things. ]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:08AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/I've been through a phase where I wanted to find out just *what* an IBM mainframe really is and I've come out convinced that today (i.e. not speaking 30-40 years ago) it's almost sure completely uncompetitive nowadays and is simply a way for IBM to extend their vendor lock-in to customers who bought one last century and are convinced they can't afford to migrate. Most of the basis for this is that IBM absolutely does not allow publishing *any and all* benchmarks between their mainframes and "normal" systems (what they call "distributed" - as in "non-centralized") but continue to cite ludicrous performance and energy savings numbers. I've tried both official (as a journalist for a local IT magazine) and unofficial channels.

Practically all IBM numbers regarding mainframes are bogus and taken out of context by IBM themselves. For instance, the "9 billion instructions a second" number quoted in the comment might seem big until you realize that mainframe CPUs are beefed-up PowerPC cores which are basically RISC, so they count each clock cycle as an "instruction". In other words, clock for clock, you get more performance out of a quad-core CPU which can be bought over the counter for about $1300 (e.g. Xeon 5570).

Reliability cannot possibly beat that achieved by distributed applications and distributed data centers like Google and Facebook have, simply going from first principles. Etc. Etc.

In short - I hope noone buys into IBM Mainframe stories without benchmarking (performance and money-wise!) everything for themselves first.]]>Jul 23rd 2010 5:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
Next, the instructions that are counted are zSeries instructions, not clock cycles or Power (which has nothing to do with zSeries). The zSeries instruction set has several hundred opcodes (more than oe hundred were added in this release alone) and is most definately not a RISC processor.

Comparing Google or Facebook to a mainframe is absurd. Google and Facebook give the appearance of high reliability, but they are not necessarily all that reliable. Sometimes you do get errors (timeouts, incorrect results, etc) on Google or FB, so you just hit the reload button and go on your merry way. You would not be happy if your bank or credit card used the same techinques. In those environments EVERY transaction must work EVERY time, with no ambiguity.

Lastly, nobody buys a mainframe based on something they read somewhere. Instead, they take their actual workload (programs and data) to IBM and try it on real hardware.]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/IBM's mainframes will spank the hell out of any x84 based server farm in pure I/O performance. That is where relational DBMS's get their massive performance gain on the mainframes. And IBM's mainframes can actually achieve five nines reliability(5 minutes downtime per year), where even Google(who's server farms are the biggest of all) does not expect nor have that kind of reliability.
In any case there are new installations of mainframes all the time, because there are some huge advantages in certain cases, even if a lot of workload can be just as easily done on commodity H/W.

BTW, the processors in the mainframes are not even designed by the same department as Power processors.

PS: Even Google uses the traditional methods of accounting and payments. It's their search and less critical applications that you hear about.
PPS: You will not find any benchmarks of Oracle's DBMS anywhere also. It's a normal procedure.]]>Jul 26th 2010 8:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
These beasts are $110,999]]>Jul 23rd 2010 7:51AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 7:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/The design is actually very cool, and that green line down the middle does groove with XBox styling.

...and indeed it is slimmer than the XBox 360.]]>Jul 23rd 2010 8:14AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
Probably is quieter and generates less heat than a 360.]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:13AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 7:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 7:53AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
Exactly what kind of giant desk do you have?]]>Jul 23rd 2010 7:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 7:58AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 8:11AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 12:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 8:02AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 8:06AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 8:15AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=j1_uvM-5xKs&feature=related]]>Jul 23rd 2010 8:49AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 8:35AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 8:40AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
I don't know where you got that. It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per core.]]>Jul 23rd 2010 8:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 8:48AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 9:02AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
they better make sure these things dont need a friggin bumper or a case]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:16AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
That was quite funny actually.
Then again if something goes wrong with those toys no bumper would help ;)]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:19AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:02AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
More like a cool mil, easy. These are the high class enterprise ES frames. The smaller, business class z11's come out next year.]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:03AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 9:11AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/Jul 23rd 2010 9:15AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/
Now if I only had a few million bucks to play with . . . ]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:15AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/ibms-zenterprise-architecture-makes-mainframes-cool-again-also/One (geek) has to wonder : What's that chip ?]]>Jul 23rd 2010 9:34AM