I used to work at IBM, making x86-based appliances. Occasionally there was a push to use Power, but x86 single-thread performance was better and cost was lower so it never happened. What would have been nice is if they allowed us to use z's CPU, but in a 1U or 2U appliance. The marketing advantage would be that we could claim to get Z's reliability for our appliance (even if it was slower). I understand they wouldn't make a generic z low end z/OS server (competing with themselves), but this would have been a nice closed-system use case.
BTW, mainframe group takes reliability very seriously. Basically it must not ever corrupt customer (financial) data plus the fit rate must be as good as it can possibly be. I remember when they were making the zBx add-on (an x86 blade center for z which could run Java web apps), they tested the x86 in a cyclotron beam to get an idea of its fit rate- it was quite good (good enough), but not as good as z's CPU.
Seeing z14 at the top of HN makes me really happy :). I actually currently work Z systems as Linux kernel dev. Z processor is a beast and has some great features.
Really enjoyed reading this, even if I didn't understand a lot of the jargon.
I find mainframes fascinating beasts, I don't understand how a programmer would be able to make use of all those "CPs" but it sure looks like a lot of power to use!
It's very exotic, maybe too exotic. I'd imagine hiring junior people and training them up on these things is a lot of effort and probably very hard to hire for - in competition with the companies offering cloud experience etc
Every time I read tech news on IBM's Z series mainframes I wonder what a minimum viable / reasonable build out of this hardware might be. As a regular human there's no way or reason I'd ever really need an actual mainframe but the hardware itself has fascinated me for a long time.
Seeing Z related article at the top of HN is pleasantly surprising :). The Z systems are a beast and have some very good features
FWIW, the mainframe teardown videos on YouTube are fun to watch: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vuXrsCqfCU4
Each z14 has "approximately 20,000" C4 solder bumps, i.e. connections! That's astounding.
It's a little sad these machines are so expensive. I can see it from IBM's point of view, there probably is not much money to be made in scaling these machines down, but still.
I wonder how this mainframe compares with a similarly priced x86-based server rack running Linux.
I didn't check this out but what made me respect IBM was their cell (PS3) processor. Very well thought design and ahead of time. Shame it was hard to program.
IBM Z systems are always fascinating to a computer engineer. I was fortunate at my first job to be able to access a z10 brand new, and was tasked with installing, configuring, and trying out several POCs with z/OS, DB2 on z/OS, WebSphere Application server on z/OS, CICS transaction server, z/VM operating system, running 1000's of linux images on top of z/VM, making them communicate with each other and z/OS using Hipersockets. It was pure fun.
The cool moments I distinctly remember were runing the z/OS installation binaries from tape drives, and swapping in and out - DASDs(Hard disks), and perhaps the coolest was being able to hot plug in/out CPU blades from the cabinet while the system is live.
It's pity that thing is so expensive, and out of reach of the common folks.
For those not in the know, and curious. Based on my knowledge from 2011, CPs are the general purpose CPUs that run z/OS - the main OS companies typically run on System Z. There were special CPUs(may be microcoded so), called IFL that were allowed to run z/VM and Linux. I don't know how things have evolved in the last 7 years :-)