New life in the Mainframe - The birth of a new mainframe generation: z17

I can still remember when every year or so I used to read a new “Death of the Mainframe” story. And, yet, the mainframe is still here, and companies like IBM, BMC, Broadcom and others are still doing very nicely out of it.

It is transitioning to “Just Another (very powerful) Server” – I wish we could lose the name and start calling it “Enterprise Server 3.0” – but it is still basically the same, throughput-based, highly parallel, highly available architecture. No “patch Tuesday”, you can update mainframe software while it is still working, and 5mins downtime a year can be a subject for concern.

Why is it still around, aside from reliability, scalability, speed, throughput etc? Well, its green credentials are becoming a factor these days. You can operate a mainframe at near 100% utilization (over 100% in fact, because of all the extra processors it can utilize). And when modern innovations like (so-called) artificial intelligence mop up cpu cycles, that matters. The mainframe also gives you a choice of different ways of cooling its processors – and with liquid cooling, you can even make use of your waste heat for something useful (IBM seems to be eschewing distilled water now, in favor of some magic cooling liquid). In our recent InPerspective on Mainframe Modernisation, one of the customers we talked to said: “there is a lot of interest in the mainframe’s environmental credentials, which are important for large organizations who have made big commitments to being ‘greener’”.

So, it will probably come as no surprise that IBM’s latest z server, the z17, is optimized for resource-hungry AI – and also for Cloud, of you are more interested in business computing than magic. OK, that’s a little unfair on AI, but there are people using ChatGPT when a simple google search would do; and while there are a lot of new AI projects, there aren’t quite so many documented business use cases delivering a real return on investment. Still, I am sure that AI will revolutionize the user experience, with natural language etc, at least, and that it will continue to eat electricity and produce heat.

The z17 looks like it should be popular. A Broadcom spokesperson says “From day one, Broadcom’s software solutions are fully ready to help organizations leverage the z17’s transformative capabilities. Our commitment to providing immediate, comprehensive support for the platform reflects our deep understanding of the critical role mainframes play in enterprise computing”. More to the point, perhaps, it also says that it “leverages our own z17 platform in Broadcom labs to complete full testing of our technology with the new platform [which] ensures full compatibility across our entire mainframe software stack”. I am thinking that you should now expect similar from any mainframe software vendor and perhaps the smaller ones will take a little time to acquire a new z17 or access to one. Of course, if your current z server meets your needs why upgrade – until you are ready to take advantage of z17’s new capabilities? That is up to you, but I do think you will want your software to become “z17 ready” as you maintain it.

So, what is new. The z17 (which is going to be available in June) comes with Telum II processors (an update to what was in the z16) with a built-in on-chip AI accelerator and Spyre accelerator processors. One of the sometimes overlooked benefits of z mainframes is the availability of specialized processors that you can just plug in. The IBM Spyre Accelerator, available later this year, was jointly developed with IBM Research and IBM Infrastructure development. and will contain 32 AI accelerator cores sharing a similar architecture to the AI accelerator integrated into the Telum II chip. Multiple IBM Spyre Accelerators can be connected into the I/O Subsystem of IBM z and IBM LinuxONE via PCIe. Combining these two technologies can result in a substantial increase in the amount of available acceleration. See here and if you want more technical details, read this.

IBM will introduce a performance management tool called IBM Z Operations Unite in May and release a new version of its mainframe operating system, z/OS 3.2, in Q3 of this year. “This is a fully engineered stack,” Tina Tarquinio, VP and chief product officer for IBM Z and Linux One, said during the announcement briefing; and it is needed because the latest research sponsored by IBM confirms that 70% of global transactions by value (including 90% of credit card transactions) still run on mainframes.

This makes mainframe and legacy modernization a key interest for many companies and Tarquinio said that the z17 will facilitate this by using Spyre to drive Watsonx Code Assistant for Z on-premises.

The new capabilities of the z17 include:

• AI, observability, and automation tools that drive operational excellence
• Holistic cybersecurity protection and risk management features
• Efficient storage and management of enterprise data at scale
• Simplified hybrid cloud integration through open standards and frameworks.

To take advantage of these you will want to develop modernized DevX and DevOps processes and to explore value add vendor and Open Source Software partnerships. Jason Bloomberg (Managing Partner at Intellyx) discusses this here. I am fairly confident that AI will be a key part of modernizing the mainframe – and, in particular, of finding out what your heritage codebase actually does. This means that the AI capabilities of z17 could be very useful.

What does this all really mean? I think, that the z17 is a living platform, still being actively developed and engineered for AI and LinuxOne. It even includes quantum-safe encryption which you may not actually need now but which you may be very happy you used in, say, 10 year’s time, when Quantum Computers are common and your 10 year old archives still need protection.

The basic message, however, is that “there is life in the old mainframe yet”. Sorry, in Enterprise Server 3.0 – or should that now be 3.1?