The Enduring Power of Mainframes

Mainframes are fueling approximately 70% of the world's economy in terms of global transactions.

The IBM System/360, the first modern mainframe, was introduced in April 1964, and despite the evolution of computers since then, mainframes remain the backbone of critical applications in banks, airlines, government, and retail.

Mainframes are known for their resilience, security, uptime, and processing capacity, with 70-80% of the world's transaction data and 70-90% of credit card transactions still relying on them.

IBM zSystems is a family name that's used by IBM for all of its z/Architecture mainframe computers, beginning with the z900 released in 2000 to the IBM z16 released in May 2022. (The "z" stands for "zero downtime," which reflects the reliability of the system.) 

IBM Z mainframes run on z/OS, Linux and z/TPF, with multiple operating systems (OS) often running on a single mainframe.

IBM z16 was launched in May 2022

They can process over 1 million transactions per second, showcasing their reliability and security. Unplanned downtime on a mainframe is 3.15 milliseconds a year. The same is in minutes for the best x86 servers.

IBM zSystems and IBM Power systems are both hardware platforms offered by IBM, but they serve different purposes and have distinct characteristics.

IBM Power systems and mainframes have a shared history, they have evolved into distinct product lines with different characteristics and target use cases. 

India has become a key player in modernizing mainframes, with IBM's India Systems Development Lab (ISDL) taking on complex work and contributing to the development of processors like the IBM Telum and Telum II. In IBM's mainframe portfolio, ISDL does everything – chip design, firmware, operating systems, hypervisors, middleware software, power, storage and assisting system integrators to help global and local businesses.

The India team works on various aspects of the processor and has successfully demonstrated AI inferencing for credit card transactions using the Telum chip.

IBM is using its GenAI platform, watsonx, to build code assistance for the Z platform, aiding in understanding legacy code and building new features.

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