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IBM's new mainframe keeps everything encrypted, all the time
Data breaches are bad enough by themselves, but they're made worse when companies don't bother to (or can't) encrypt all their info. It's tantamount to giving hackers the keys to the kingdom. But what to do? IBM thinks it has a simple solution: encrypt absolutely everything. Its latest Z mainframe system now has enough power to automatically encrypt all the data associated with an app or service, whether it's in transit or sitting idle in a database. According to IBM, conventional systems based on x86 processors only encrypt "limited slices" of information, while the new Z has enough power (18 times more, in fact) to lock everything down as a matter of course.
Mainframe computing pioneer Gene Amdahl dies at 92
Gene Amdahl, a pioneer of mainframe computing, died from pneumonia this week at age 92. Dr. Amdahl is known for is work with IBM, more specifically on the IBM 704, IBM 709 and other projects. He was also the chief architect on the System/360 series, a line of mainframe computers that would become the most successful in IBM's history. In fact, it's inner workings would influence computer design in the years that followed. After two stints with IBM, Dr. Amdahl set up the Amdahl Corporation that would directly compete with his former employer in the mainframe market. His machines were less expensive and faster that those of IBM while still being compatible with the company's mainframe software. He also formulated Amdahl's law which is used to predict the theoretical maximum speed improvement across multiple processors in parallel computing. Dr. Amdahl is survived by his wife, two daughters, five grandchildren and a brother. [Image credit: Marcin Wichary/Flickr]
IBM's monster mainframe is built to handle your mobile shopping
Shopping from your phone is a big deal these days, but it requires a lot of effort behind the scenes to run smoothly -- when there are thousands of people tapping "buy" in short succession, they can easily bring a server to its knees. That crush might not be a problem for stores that have IBM's beastly new z13 mainframe, though. The system's gobs of CPU power (the "world's fastest microprocessor," IBM claims), memory and bandwidth let it handle a whopping 2.5 billion mobile shopping transactions per day, or enough that even a mad rush like Black Friday shouldn't bog it down. It's fast enough to analyze every deal in real time, too, so it's more likely to catch someone who stole your credit card info before you have to dispute any unwanted charges. You'll probably never know which specific apps and sites are using the z13, but this giant computer might just save you from inordinate waits and rude surprises the next time you're ordering online. [Image credit: IBM, Flickr]
One of the first true computers is finally on public display
Seeing ENIAC, one of the first true programmable computers, has been tricky; the giant mainframe was partly restored in 2007, but it was only visible in an office building. At last, though, you now have a (relatively) easy way to witness this piece of computing history first-hand. The US Army's Field Artillery Museum in Fort Sill, Oklahoma recently put several of ENIAC's revived panels on public display, giving you a chance to see a significant chunk of the very early mainframe in person.
New DCUO trailer highlights the mainframe feature
DC Universe Online understands that everyone, even mighty superheroes and dastardly supervillains, needs a place to call home. Home Turf, the upcoming DLC pack, will introduce custom player housing. Players will be able to pick from a variety of themes and hundreds of items to create a hidey hole that's unique to their tastes. As well as being a good place to plan operations and bask in the warm afterglow of success, players' bases will also be the site of 1:1 PvP matches. Nobody's Secret Sanctuary or Ha-Ha-Hacienda is perfectly safe, though: Player housing will include a "new combat dimension" to keep folks on their toes. What's at the heart of every dark lair and secret refuge? Why, the mainframe of course! Skip below the cut to get a video introduction to Home Turf's mainframe feature. [Source: SOE press release]
Harwell Dekatron revived as the world's oldest working, original digital computer
Over 60 years since the first digital computers switched on, the chances of seeing one of these pioneers in action have grown incredibly slim as time (and recycling) takes its toll. Take a visit to Britain's National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park as of today, however, and you'll see one working. A finished 3-year restoration effort lets the Harwell Dekatron -- at one point renamed the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell, or WITCH -- claim the title of the world's oldest functional digital computer still using its original design. Aside from its room-filling dimensions, the 1951-era mainframe may be worth the trip just for recalling a time when there were no hard and fast rules in computing: the Dekatron operates in its namesake decimal system, not binary, and puts most of its components on full display. The computer is part of the regular exhibit lineup and should be easy to see; the daunting part may be realizing that virtually any chip in a 2012 smartphone could outmuscle the Dekatron without breaking a sweat.
IBM debuts new mainframe computer as it eyes a more mobile Watson
Those looking for a juxtaposition of IBM's past and future needn't look much further than two bits of news out of the company this week. The first comes with IBM's announcement of its new zEnterprise EC12 25 mainframe server -- a class of computer that may be a thing of the past in some places, but which still serves a fairly broad range of companies. In addition to an appearance that lives up to the "mainframe" moniker, this one promises 25 percent more performance per core than its predecessor and 50 percent more capacity. The second bit of news involves Watson, the company's AI effort that rose to fame on Jeopardy! and has since gone on to find a number of new roles. As Bloomberg reports, one of its next steps may be to take on Siri in the smartphone space. While there's no indication of a broader consumer product, IBM sees a range of possible applications for a mobile Watson in business and enterprise -- even, for instance, giving farmers the ability to ask when they should plant their crops. Before that happens, though, IBM says it needs to give Watson more "senses" in order to respond to real-world input like image recognition -- not to mention learn all it can about any given subject.
IBM pushing System z, Power7+ chips as high as 5.5GHz, mainframes get mightier
Ten-core, 2.4GHz Xeons? Pshaw. IBM is used to the kind of clock speeds and brute force power that lead to Europe-dominating supercomputers. Big Blue has no intentions of letting its guard down when it unveils its next generation processors at the upcoming Hot Chips conference: the company is teasing that the "zNext" chip at the heart of a future System z mainframe will ramp up to 5.5GHz -- that's faster than the still-speedy 5.2GHz z196 that has led IBM's pack since 2010. For those who don't need quite that big a sledgehammer, the technology veteran is hinting that its upcoming Power7+ processors will be up to 20 percent faster than the long-serving Power7, whose current 4.14GHz peak clock rate may seem quaint. We'll know just how much those extra cycles mean when IBM takes to the conference podium on August 29th, but it's safe to say that our databases and large-scale simulations won't know what hit them.
NASA pulls the plug on the mainframe computer era
It's the end of another era at NASA, although this one was perhaps more inevitable than others. Chief Information Officer Linda Cureton announced in a blog post over the weekend that the agency's last mainframe computer was shut down this month, marking an end to decades of room-filling computers. Of course, that last mainframe was considerably more recent than that pictured above. It was an IBM Z9 (pictured at the source link below), still quite a behemoth and useful for certain applications, but deemed unnecessary by NASA in the face of other more flexible alternatives. Feeling nostalgic or curious about those days gone by? You can find a bit of mainframe history at the links below.
John Opel, IBM CEO during onset of the PC era, dies at 86
John Roberts Opel, the former IBM CEO who helped usher in the PC era, died last week at the age of 86. A native of Kansas City, MO, Opel received his MBA from the University of Chicago in 1949, after fighting in the Philippines and Okinawa during World War II. Upon graduating, he was presented with two job offers -- he could either re-write economics textbooks, or assume control of his father's hardware business in Missouri. Not particularly enthralled with either opportunity, Opel decided to think things over during a fishing trip with his father and a family friend. As fate would have it, that friend turned out to be Harry Strait, an IBM sales manager. Strait offered Opel a sales position at the company, fortuitously setting the young grad on a career path that would span 36 years. Opel's career, in fact, began and peaked at two inflection points that would come to define not only IBM, but the computing industry as a whole. When he came aboard, IBM was still producing typewriters and other accounting devices; but that would soon change, with the dawn of the computing era. In 1959, he became assistant to then-chief executive Thomas J. Watson Jr. Just five years later, he oversaw the introduction of IBM's System 360 mainframe computer. He was appointed vice president in 1966, president in 1974 and, on January 1st, 1981, took over as IBM's fifth CEO, replacing Frank T. Cary. During his four-year tenure, Opel led IBM's push into the burgeoning PC market, overseeing the launch of IBM's first PC, the 5150, just seven months after taking the reins. He was also at the helm in 1982, when the Department of Justice dropped its 13-year antitrust suit against IBM, allowing the firm to expand its operations. Opel took full advantage. Under his stewardship, IBM's revenue nearly doubled and its corporate stature grew accordingly. In 1983, Opel made the cover of Time magazine, under a headline that read, "The Colossus That Works." He stepped down as CEO in 1985, served as chairman until 1986 and would remain on IBM's board until 1993. On Thursday, he passed away in Ft. Myers, FL, due to undisclosed causes. John Roberts Opel is survived by his wife of 56 years, five children, 15 grandchildren and a legacy that extends far beyond these 400 words.
Hacker nets two years in jail after pilfering £7 million in virtual poker chips
Crime, it just doesn't pay. Well, actually it does, to the tune of £53,612, but then you get caught and you have to work off that salary with two years at Her Majesty's pleasure. One Ashley Mitchell, an enterprising 29-year old from Devon, England, managed to break into Farmville maker Zynga's mainframe, hijack the identities of two of its staffers, and procure for himself a cool £7 million ($11.4m) in virtual poker chips. He then proceeded to sell about a third of them for the above sum, while consuming a big chunk of the rest in satisfying his own gambling habit. Ashley already had a history of digital malfeasance, having previously hacked into the systems of Torbay Council, his former employer, and is now on the receiving end of a two-year prison term for his current crime plus the activation of a 30-week suspended sentence. There's a warning in this tale of woe for us all, however -- Monsieur Mitchell piggybacked on his neighbors' unsecured WiFi networks in order to do his dastardly deeds. Slap a password on that router, won't you?
IBM's zEnterprise architecture makes mainframes cool again, also efficient (video)
There's a good chance you think mainframes are about as cool as pocket protectors, your parents on Facebook, and COBOL... the latter of which, of course, is largely executed on mainframes. If so, stand still while IBM blows the doors (and the dust) off of your mainframe misconceptions with its new zEnterprise 196, offering 96 5.2GHz cores, 3TB of RAM, and hot swappable I/O drawers for when you need to change pants in a hurry. All this is said to boost performance by 60 percent compared to its predecessor, the z10, while also reducing energy consumption by a claimed 80 percent -- though that could be compared to people sitting in tanning booths performing calculations with abacuses for all we know. However, you can drop consumption a further 12 percent by opting for the water cooling system, nice if your AC unit is already struggling. IBM will start shipping these behemoths sometime in the last quarter of this year and didn't mention pre-orders, so get ready to rent the biggest truck you can find and camp out in Armonk if you want yours on release day.
IBM's z10 mainframe to take on the upstart PC
Shocking as it may seem, mainframe computing has never really gone away -- even in this age of modular PS3-based supercomputers, financial institutions, retailers, and other large corporations still buy the big iron, which means IBM still makes it. The company's latest, the fridge-sized System z10, follows up on the million-dollar System z9 released three years ago with faster, cooler processors, more energy efficient designs, 70 percent more computing capacity -- and a smaller price tag, starting at just south of a million dollars this time. Hilariously, the z10 caused a bit of a mainframe Osbourne effect: eager customers holding off on z9 purchases in anticipation of the z10 caused a 15 percent drop in IBM's mainframe revenue last quarter. Mainframe fanboys? Nothing surprises us anymore.
