IBM leaks details of new z10 Enterprise Class mainframe |
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By Mark Fontecchio, News Writer
22 Feb 2008 | SearchDataCenter.com |
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IBM is expected to introduce a new mainframe on Tuesday, Feb. 26, a 64-way server it will call the z10 Enterprise Class.
On Tuesday, the company will hold an event in New York City where it's expected to reveal details about the new hardware. It will be the first IBM mainframe to be released in some two years and will follow up on its z9 Enterprise and Business Class machines. IBM will also preview the new version of its z/OS mainframe operating system at Tuesday's event and announce availabilty in September.
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The z10 Enterprise Class will come in five different models and feature 64-way chips.
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According to an internal IBM document obtained by SearchDataCenter.com, the z10 Enterprise Class will come in five different models and is a 64-way machine compared with the 54-way z9 mainframes and earlier 32-way models. In a conference call last month, IBM CFO Mark Loughridge told investors that the z10 would have 50% more capacity, which indicates that it will probably tap out at around 27,000 million instructions per second (MIPS) at the top end, compared with about 18,000 MIPS on the previous z9 Enterprise Class.
It's not clear whether IBM will follow up its z10 Enterprise Class with a Business Class model next year, as it did with the z9 iteration. Other features of the new big iron new offering include the following:
- a quad-core mainframe central processor previously called the z6;
- fixed hardware storage area (HSA) of 16 GB, so users won't have to sacrifice memory for HSA any longer;
- an integrated hardware decimal floating-point processor to aid with financial and enterprise resource planning applications;
- a reduction in power-on reset (POR), which could enable the ability to reassign additional logical partition (LPAR) resources without compromising application performance; and
- a feature called HiperDispatch, the details of which are unclear.
In addition, IBM is expected to announce details of the next version of z/OS, v1.10, which will be available in September. Some features will include the following:
- support for up to 64 engines to go with the z10 and up to 1 terabyte of real memory per LPAR.
- support on mainframes dating back to the z800;
- a capacity provisioning manager;
- basic HyperSwap for monitoring storage devices;
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- JES2 Dynamic Exit to enabling the adding, deleting and refreshing of user exits dynamically.
In keeping with the typical IBM schedule, when v1.10 becomes generally available in September, z/OS v1.7 users can expect an end of support .
Let us know what you think about the story; email Mark Fontecchio, News Writer. You can also check out our Server Specs blog.
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