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IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

www-03.ibm.com

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Re: IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

#51

Post by pjmlp »

graycat wrote: post #39
_RPM wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you press the main button. BOOM! Interrupt! That is one example. They even had virtualization in the 80's on System / 370 long VMWare came out.

There was the operating systems CMS and CP67 done by the IBM Cambridge Scientific Center for the IBM 360/67 in, right, about 1967. The CP67 was control program 67 and was for virtual machine. CMS was Cambridge Monitor Systems, maybe off and on Conversational Monitor System, and the command-line time-sharing operating system users saw. CP67 was intended as a means for interactive, time-shared operating system developm…

They still are.

When I started learning how OS/400 work, now IBM i. I was quite interested to see the execution model of having everything stored as bytecode, with a JIT kernel doing AOT compilation at install time.

Something that is kind of being done on the Android and Windows worlds, attempted on Oberon and Inferno, but not with the extent that the OS/400 does it.

Re: IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

#52

Post by rl9 »

m_mueller wrote: post #28
jlarocco wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always feel like mainframes are off in some weird parallel universe. > Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD), a vector processing model providing instruction level parallelism, to speed workloads such as analytics and mathematical modeling. For example, COBOL 5.2 and PL/I 4.5 exploit SIMD and improved floating point enhancements to deliver improved performance over and above that provided by the faster processor.…

> I always feel like mainframes are off in some weird parallel universe. Well they are. These things are built for a specific audience and it so happens that they are still willing to spend money on this, otherwise it wouldn't be made, especially not by IBM that is otherwise quick to disband business units that don't make heaps of money. In my research I'm using an even older language: Fortran. Believe it or not, but…

It's not just learnability. In some cases, Fortran can be considered to be faster than C since it can apply something like -fno-strict-alisasing by default.

Not to mention that most compilers have OpenMP suport built-in. Also, there's the tons of heavily-optimized Fortran math libraries that make it easy to take advantage of big machines and big clusters.

Those scientists that are still using Fortran after all these years know what they're doing. It's not that they're ignorant of new technoglogy. A well-informed and open-minded CS person would probably end up using Fortran for these use cases, too.

Re: IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

#53

Post by ExpiredLink »

jlarocco wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #14

I've found some specs: - up to 141 configurable processors - new 22nm 8-core processor chip@5GHZ - 110GIPS - Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) support - On chip cryptographic and compression coprocessors - up to 10 TB of memory (configured as 'memory raid', RAIM) PDF is here: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/zs/en/zsd03035usen/...

I always feel like mainframes are off in some weird parallel universe. > Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD), a vector processing model providing instruction level parallelism, to speed workloads such as analytics and mathematical modeling. For example, COBOL 5.2 and PL/I 4.5 exploit SIMD and improved floating point enhancements to deliver improved performance over and above that provided by the faster processor.…

> I always feel like mainframes are off in some weird parallel universe.

This parallel universe is called reality and you live in the matrix.

Re: IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

#54

Post by m_mueller »

rl9 wrote: post #52
m_mueller wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always feel like mainframes are off in some weird parallel universe. Well they are. These things are built for a specific audience and it so happens that they are still willing to spend money on this, otherwise it wouldn't be made, especially not by IBM that is otherwise quick to disband business units that don't make heaps of money. In my research I'm using an even older language: Fortran. Believe it or not, but…

It's not just learnability. In some cases, Fortran can be considered to be faster than C since it can apply something like -fno-strict-alisasing by default. Not to mention that most compilers have OpenMP suport built-in. Also, there's the tons of heavily-optimized Fortran math libraries that make it easy to take advantage of big machines and big clusters. Those scientists that are still using Fortran after all these…

> It's not just learnability. In some cases, Fortran can be considered to be faster than C since it can apply something like -fno-strict-alisasing by default.

Yes. In my experience, you can make C as fast as Fortran, but it will be a lot more work (and you need more knowledge about the machine). Fortran's defaults are very strong when it comes to crunching numbers as quickly as possible. Multidimensional arrays with Matlab-like slicing and operations, implemented as performant as possible, is enough reason alone to stay with Fortran.

> Those scientists that are still using Fortran after all these years know what they're doing. It's not that they're ignorant of new technoglogy. A well-informed and open-minded CS person would probably end up using Fortran for these use cases, too.

Well, I'm sort of coming out of CS (computer engineering with focus on software) and I'm using it, so there ;)

Re: IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

#55

Post by vans »

halayli wrote: post #45
jacquesm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use TPS as a unit because that's how large banks and other transaction oriented entities do their provisioning and capacity planning. That's their 'unit', not CPU cycles.

But how can they claim they can do X transactions when a transaction's processing requirement is undefined?

Because they are not arguing with scientists but with "decision makers". So bullshit is more important than proven facts... Tanksfully, banks are moving slowly out of mainframes. You'll never find a new business going on a mainframe. Mainframes users are captive, not free.

Re: IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

#56

Post by noselasd »

jlarocco wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #14

I've found some specs: - up to 141 configurable processors - new 22nm 8-core processor chip@5GHZ - 110GIPS - Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) support - On chip cryptographic and compression coprocessors - up to 10 TB of memory (configured as 'memory raid', RAIM) PDF is here: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/zs/en/zsd03035usen/...

I always feel like mainframes are off in some weird parallel universe. > Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD), a vector processing model providing instruction level parallelism, to speed workloads such as analytics and mathematical modeling. For example, COBOL 5.2 and PL/I 4.5 exploit SIMD and improved floating point enhancements to deliver improved performance over and above that provided by the faster processor.…

If you want to learn a bit more about mainframes, this podcast http://www.se-radio.net/2012/03/episode-184-the-mainframe-wi... has a lot of great info.

Re: IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

#57

Post by Shivetya »

jlarocco wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #14

I've found some specs: - up to 141 configurable processors - new 22nm 8-core processor chip@5GHZ - 110GIPS - Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) support - On chip cryptographic and compression coprocessors - up to 10 TB of memory (configured as 'memory raid', RAIM) PDF is here: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/zs/en/zsd03035usen/...

I always feel like mainframes are off in some weird parallel universe. > Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD), a vector processing model providing instruction level parallelism, to speed workloads such as analytics and mathematical modeling. For example, COBOL 5.2 and PL/I 4.5 exploit SIMD and improved floating point enhancements to deliver improved performance over and above that provided by the faster processor.…

I am on an iSeries, the little brother to the z. We have a pair of zSeries as well. COBOL and RPG (its fully free form by the way, looks like any other language) are both very much rooted in business logic, in particular math. Their number handling is well known and without inconsistencies of many newer languages. That and the code base is well established and works. Throw in that memory leaks are nearly non existent, code is independent of changes to the microprocessors and your investment always comes forward.

Seriously, we have code whose originals can be traced to systems long dead. Yet code is not stagnate, full SQL integration exists for most language, there are many ways to get to the web. That and you would be surprised at the number of companies who use these machines simply for one reason above all, reliability. Our last crash was a site failure and even then we rolled to the DR site instantly.

Re: IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

#58

Post by Normati »

m_mueller wrote: post #54
rl9 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just learnability. In some cases, Fortran can be considered to be faster than C since it can apply something like -fno-strict-alisasing by default. Not to mention that most compilers have OpenMP suport built-in. Also, there's the tons of heavily-optimized Fortran math libraries that make it easy to take advantage of big machines and big clusters. Those scientists that are still using Fortran after all these…

> It's not just learnability. In some cases, Fortran can be considered to be faster than C since it can apply something like -fno-strict-alisasing by default. Yes. In my experience, you can make C as fast as Fortran, but it will be a lot more work (and you need more knowledge about the machine). Fortran's defaults are very strong when it comes to crunching numbers as quickly as possible. Multidimensional arrays with…

I always wonder why you can't just add a library to another language to get most of the features of somebody else's favorite language. If not a library, couldn't any other language add matlab style matrices and end up being as good as it, fortran, etc? Do we really need a whole different language with a whole different set of arbitrary rules just so a few features are easier or faster?

Re: IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

#59

Post by drKarl »

While it's an undeniable technological achievement, I don't think it's a good strategical one.

Nowadays you don't create a single monolithic system, really expensive too, which is capable of processing all of your transactions, as it says, like 100 cybermondays every day.

Instead, you have a distributed system, with many cheap, geographically distributed servers, each one capable of a much lower number of transactions, but still quite high today... and also you can spin up new servers as needed, or destroy servers as they are no longer needed, so you control your costs when you don't need as much instead of having a very expensive mainframe 90% underutilized 90% of the time.

Re: IBM Launches Z13 Mainframe

#60

Post by aries1980 »

jacquesm wrote: post #14

I've found some specs: - up to 141 configurable processors - new 22nm 8-core processor chip@5GHZ - 110GIPS - Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) support - On chip cryptographic and compression coprocessors - up to 10 TB of memory (configured as 'memory raid', RAIM) PDF is here: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/zs/en/zsd03035usen/...

110 GIPS is not too much for 141 CPU. My Core i7 4700HQ CPU dos 3 GIPS/core at 2.9 GHz.
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