IBM announced yesterday its new System z10 mainframe computer, complete with its next-generation z10 processor. IBM says the z10 is designed from the ground up to dramatically increase data center efficiency and reduce power and floor space requirements as well as cooling costs.
The new z10 is equal to nearly 1,500 x86 servers in performance and requires up to 85% less power and requires up to 85% less floor space. IBM also says that the system allows the consolidation of x86 software license at up to a 30:1 ratio.
The z10 utilizes 64 purpose-built quad-core processors for performance and is scalable enough to support hundreds to hundreds of thousands of users according to IBM. The server will support a wide range of workloads including Linux, XML, Java, WebSphere and IBM is working with Sun to bring Solaris to the z10.
IBM describes that 991 million transistor processor as a four-core processor with 3MB of L2 cache per core. The company claims the chip can operate in excess of 4.4 GHz. A separate, dedicated "service" processor adds 24MB of L3 cache, sharable among all the processor cores.
The highest-end z10 processors use five quad-core die packages and two service cores; that's 20 cores at 4.4 GHz, 60 MB of L2 cache and 48 MB of shared L3 cache on a single processor.
IBM was in the news in early February 2008 for proposing a single supercomputer capable of hosting the entire Internet as a web application. With the z10, IBM's ambitious plan might not be that far of a pipe dream.
