[sytelus]

The electrical power ($600/day vs $32/day), floor space (10,000 sq ft vs 400 sq ft), and cooling costs for those mainframes were less than those of distributed servers handling a comparable load. In addition, those mainframes required 80 percent less administration/labor (>25 people vs <5 people); “Mean Time Between Failure” measured in decades for mainframe vs months for other servers.

96 of the world’s top 100 banks, 23 of the 25 top US retailers, and 9 out of 10 of the world’s largest insurance companies run System z Seventy-one percent of global Fortune 500 companies are System z clients Nine out of the top 10 global life and health insurance providers process their high-volume transactions on a System z mainframe Mainframes process roughly 30 billion business transactions per day, including most major credit card transactions and stock trades, money transfers, manufacturing processes, and ERP systems.

The new mainframe delivered in 2010 improved single system image performance by 60 percent, while keeping within the same energy envelope when compared to previous generations. And the newest mainframe which shipped in 2012 has up to 50 percent more total system capacity, as well as availability and security enhancements.

It uses 5.5 GHz hexa-core chips – hardly old technology. It is scalable to 120 cores with 3 terabytes of memory.

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[1] http://www.share.org/p/bl/et/blogid=2&blogaid=234