Introduction
At the annual Hot Chips conference, IBM announced the first dual-architecture mainframe processor whose cores can natively run both IBM’s own instruction set and the Arm architecture. The processor, which will be used in next-generation IBM Z and LinuxONE systems, aims to run z/OS workloads alongside Arm-based Linux and artificial intelligence software on the same hardware.
Developments
Each of the chip’s 11 cores can switch between Arm and traditional Z software modes on a nanosecond timescale. Thanks to the open-source KVM hypervisor, Arm64 Linux and Linux on Z virtual machines can run side by side, while z/OS workloads run in a separate partition on the same chip.
The processor, based on a 2-nanometer manufacturing process, has a base frequency of more than 5.7 GHz.
Details
The chip features artificial intelligence inference accelerators, a dedicated data processing unit for I/O operations, and an extensive cache architecture. Full systems are planned to scale to hundreds of cores and tens of terabytes of memory.