IBM Launches z10 Mainframe
Mikael Ricknis, IDG News Service

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 6:55 AM PST

IBM Tuesday is set to launch the System z10, its next-generation mainframe, featuring quad-core processors and aimed at computing-intensive tasks.

Compared to its predecessor, the z9, the new mainframe has a lot more horsepower. Every box can be fitted with up to 64 cores for running applications, improving processor performance by 50 percent, according to IBM.

The support for Infiniband also increases internal bandwidth by a factor of two, from 2.7G bytes per second to 6G bytes per second.

"The System z10 is much better at handling CPU-intensive jobs," said Uno Bengtsson, senior IT specialist at IBM Sweden.

IBM would like to see customers start to use the mainframe for modern applications. "You can run for example SAP on Linux together with DB2 on z/OS in one box," said Bengtsson.

IBM also makes it a point that the mainframe goes hand-in-hand with both green IT and consolidation. A single System z10 is the equivalent of nearly 1,500 distributed servers, according to IBM, with up to an 85 percent smaller footprint, and 85 percent lower energy costs.

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Geez, I just love when IBM starts talking nonsensical marketing hype so that incompetent people can justify incompetent decisions of splurging more money towards what Sun was selling three years ago for about 10 cents on IBM dollar ...