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IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm

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Re: IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm

#31

Post by rbanffy »

mcbridematt wrote: post #11

Ah, that explains this patchset that was submitted to the Linux kernel today "KVM: s390: Introduce arm64 KVM" "By introducing a novel virtualization acceleration for the ARM architecture on s390 architecture, we aim to expand the platform's software ecosystem. This initial patch series lays the groundwork by enabling KVM-accelerated ARM CPU virtualization on s390....." https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-arm-k…

Z/OS for ARM then? ;-)

I’ve been running VM/370 and MVS on my RPi cluster for a long time now.

Re: IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm

#32

Post by quietsegfault »

mykowebhn wrote: post #13

This is a serious question. What does IBM, in fact, do? I'm surprised they are still around and apparently relevant. Are they more or less a services and consulting company now?

They exist to swallow up profitable companies, extract any “unnecessary” overhead (like benefits, PTO, pay that isn’t rock bottom), and package into large enterprise licensing agreements.

Re: IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm

#33

Post by Cthulhu_ »

mykowebhn wrote: post #13

This is a serious question. What does IBM, in fact, do? I'm surprised they are still around and apparently relevant. Are they more or less a services and consulting company now?

A better question would probably what they don't do; just going off the wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM) for recent history, they're in health care (imaging), weather, video streaming, cloud services, Red Hat, managed infrastructure (which branched off into a company called Kyndryl, which has 90.000 employees in 115 countries), warfare ("In June 2025, IBM was named by a UN expert report as one of several companies "central to Israel's surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction.""), etc etc etc.

Basically they do a lot, but they're not showy about it.

Re: IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm

#34

Post by quietsegfault »

lmpdev wrote: post #23
mykowebhn wrote: post #13

This is a serious question. What does IBM, in fact, do? I'm surprised they are still around and apparently relevant. Are they more or less a services and consulting company now?

I was surprised to find out they still have hardware repair technicians (extremely expensive but reliable: ~$400 per computer around 2022 iirc) But yes they’re mostly enterprise/services/mainframes not anything overly consumer

No, IBM has Unisys contractors, not employees. All the techs I’ve worked with from IBM have been a nightmare. One dropped an entire drive array on the ground, and tried to install it despite it being bent and no longer fitting on the rack. I have been acquired by IBM twice. They are a nightmare, horrible company.

Re: IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm

#35

Post by pjmlp »

mykowebhn wrote: post #13

This is a serious question. What does IBM, in fact, do? I'm surprised they are still around and apparently relevant. Are they more or less a services and consulting company now?

Own Red-Hat, thus major contributions to Wayland, GNOME, GCC and Java, at very least.

Have their own Java implementation, with capabilities like AOT before OpenJDK got started on Leyden, or even Graal existed, for years had extensions for value types (nowadays dropped), and alongside Azul, cluster based JIT compiler that shares code across JVM instances.

IBM i and z/OS are still heavely deployed in many organisations, alongside Aix, and LinuxONE (Linux running on mainframes and micros).

Research in quantum computing, AI, design processes, one of the companies that does huge amounts of patents per year across various fields.

And yes a services company, that is actually a consortium of IBM owned companies many of each under a different brand (which is followed by "an IBM company").

Re: IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm

#36

Post by ghaff »

silvestrov wrote: post #26
rzerowan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im thinking maybe as a compliment to x86 offerings and eventual displacement as a primary offering , i do not see them ditching POWER. The architecture might be non-standard and not very widespread however for what it does and workloads that are suited to it. I dont think any ARM design comes close , maybe Fujitsu's A64FX.

Marketingwise I think it is difficult for IBM to sell x86 systems as it is too easy for customers to compare performance to a standard Wintel server. Sun had the same problem after 2001 dotcom when standard PC servers became reliable enough to run web servers on. It's easier to sell "our special sauce" when building using a custom ARM platform. Then you have no easy comparison with standard servers.

IBM sold off XSeries, x86, to Lenovo years ago along with spinning off various other things that they considered commodity.

Re: IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm

#37

Post by eru »

jeswin wrote: post #29
mykowebhn wrote: post #13

This is a serious question. What does IBM, in fact, do? I'm surprised they are still around and apparently relevant. Are they more or less a services and consulting company now?

They design their own CPUs, and they sold $15b of hardware last year. Tellum ii in the z17 mainframe is a Samsung 5nm part. What I don't get however is who'd use their custom accelerators for AI inference.

Anyone who can't get any better AI accelerators elsewhere? Last I heard, these things were sold out for years on end. And anyone who can make one, can sell them.

Re: IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm

#38

Post by eru »

shrimppersimmon wrote: post #28
mykowebhn wrote: post #13

This is a serious question. What does IBM, in fact, do? I'm surprised they are still around and apparently relevant. Are they more or less a services and consulting company now?

They design and build not one but two CPU architectures, s390/Z and POWER. Both have been around for many years, but neither is obsolete, they're just not designed for consumer applications. They still generate $10-15 billion per year in revenue.

Power was used in customer applications a long time ago? I think Apple used them for a while and so did some game consoles?

Re: IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm

#40

Post by eru »

quietsegfault wrote: post #32
mykowebhn wrote: post #13

This is a serious question. What does IBM, in fact, do? I'm surprised they are still around and apparently relevant. Are they more or less a services and consulting company now?

They exist to swallow up profitable companies, extract any “unnecessary” overhead (like benefits, PTO, pay that isn’t rock bottom), and package into large enterprise licensing agreements.

Sounds like a pretty good deal for those people who keep starting these 'profitable' companies.

If IBM runs them into the ground, there's a niche for a copy-cat of the original company that you can just found again. Rinse and repeat.

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