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by codeape 3253 days ago
How powerful is a Z-series mainframe?
4 comments

You can find out in this impenetrable, 500 page technical guide here: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/pdfs/sg248451.pdf

It contains crystalline prose like this, something all technical manuals should aspire to:

"Digital technologies are driving major industry shifts, ushering in a new age. In the Cognitive EraTM1, it is either disrupting or being disrupted. Tomorrow’s disrupters will be organizations that can converge digital business with a new level of digital intelligence. A key in digital transformation is the ability to accelerate the innovation of new business (Internet of Things, Cognitive, and Virtual Reality), while keeping complexity in check."

The answer to your question, by the way, appears to be 'very'. You can have lots of processors and 32TB of RAM.

170 different cores to choose from. Not sure how they go about determining capacity on a first-time shop, but ongoing installations looking to upgrade base the capacity on the new box against their growth rate and plan accordingly for however long they expect the new mainframe to be on the production floor.
170 different types of core? Sounds like a nightmare for a new customer, conversely a bit of a dream for the mainframe sales team.
The Register has a few more details - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/17/ibm_latest_mainfram...

It features the next generation of IBM's CMOS mainframe technology, with a 10-core CPU chip using 14 nm silicon-on-insulator technology, and running at 5.2GHz, claimed to be the fastest processor in the industry. Each core has hardware accelerated encryption implementing a CP Assist for Cryptographic Function (CPACF). The CPU also has 1.5 times more on-chip cache per core compared to the z13. There can be up to 32TB of memory, three times the z13 maximum, and its IO is three times faster as well.

Technically there can be up to 16PB of memory in all their 64-bit systems, I just don't think IBM is going to sell you more than 32. The Z13 definitely sold up to 20TB, though half that was usually for redundancy.
claimed to be the fastest processor in the industry.

Defined how?

Very.

They are also built like a tank, and have so many levels of redudancy and reporting that if any component breaks in your machine they guarantee there won't be any downtime (and a technician is dispatched to fix it automatically). That includes things like CPU cache line bridges, complete cooling failures, storage failures, etc. Also they guarantee that every new version of the mainframe will not increase power consumption (which is absolutely insane).

Oh, and the bill will make you dizzy.

If you get dizzy from the bill you can't afford one. Personally I think they come with technicians living inside.
They also ship with a small eolic propeller and the case is made with photovoltaic cells. All in case of power shortage. And of course the case contains few pigeons for ip over avian carriers in case of network shortage.
I would not be surprised if that were the case. They might even start doing IP-over-technician while they repair the problem with avian flu that spiked the packet loss in the ip-over-carrier-pidgeon channel.
Just in case no one else mentions it...how about transparent geo-clustering? How about duplicated components and self-healing for critical subsystems?

Really, it's the way that non-computer people think that all computers are but actually aren't because they aren't mainframes.