IBM Unveils Next Generation Dual-Architecture Processor for IBM Z and LinuxONE • Hacker News Board

Re: IBM Unveils Next Generation Dual-Architecture Processor for IBM Z and LinuxONE

#131

Post by wmf » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:02 AM UTC

pezezin wrote: post #130

avhception wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Fujitsu ARM Server for normal people that I can buy through a normal retail channel and boot a freakin' generic Linux ISO... that would be great! (Yes, I'm aware of Ampere Altra. The space desperately needs competition and commoditization, imho.)

The funny thing is that Fujitsu has a sizable enterprise IT business, and their Primergy servers are very good, so why don't they offer their own ARM CPUs?

The previous A64fx was just for HPC. Monaka looks more general purpose so maybe they will sell Monaka servers.

Re: IBM Unveils Next Generation Dual-Architecture Processor for IBM Z and LinuxONE

#132

Post by wmf » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:06 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #87

The article is quite short on details but I wonder if this is an ARM core that can also execute IBM Z, or the other way around; in other words, which ISA does it execute its first instruction at the reset vector? In that past I've worked on a conceptual design for an "x86+" CPU, which would start as a regular x86 but then be able to execute code of other architectures like ARM, MIPS, PPC, etc. isolated in their own c…

It starts in z mode and can only run ARM code in VMs.

start as a regular x86 but then be able to execute code of other architectures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Instruction_Set

Re: IBM Unveils Next Generation Dual-Architecture Processor for IBM Z and LinuxONE

#133

Post by wmf » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:07 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #116

trwei wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Z’s memory model is much stronger than arm, so running arm on z memory model requires almost no design changes. The inverse is not true.

Which leaves a substantial amount of performance on the table. Which IBM may be fine with, but benchmarks are important to IBM.

I don't think z has been benchmarked in 20 years.

Re: IBM Unveils Next Generation Dual-Architecture Processor for IBM Z and LinuxONE

#134

Post by BillStrong » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:02 AM UTC

sylware wrote: post #112

BillStrong wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AMD Zen 6 line is targeting 7GHz in the upcoming releases, on 2nm, so......

Last time I read something about Zen6 it was 6GHz. So I guess the IBM stuff is "server slow" then. I wish RISC-V microarchitectures would get access to 2nm silicon processes, because RISC-V at 7GHz... yummy.

There was a card just detailed on Hot Chips that used a whole bunch of RISC-V CPUs on 2nm to run at 1.8GHz, but really low power, for compute on a CXL card that could also have SSDs for cached storage.

So, don't assume they would crank up the GHz.

Re: IBM Unveils Next Generation Dual-Architecture Processor for IBM Z and LinuxONE

#135

Post by pezezin » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 12:43 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #131

pezezin wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that Fujitsu has a sizable enterprise IT business, and their Primergy servers are very good, so why don't they offer their own ARM CPUs?

The previous A64fx was just for HPC. Monaka looks more general purpose so maybe they will sell Monaka servers.

A man can dream...