How the Z13 named for Z13 Mainframe?

The z13 is so named because it’s the 13th generation of CMOS mainframe.

What is CMOS?

For the mainframe, and the whole computer industry,
it’s been a great ride on complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology.

Mainframe Infrastructure got drastically reduced during mid 1990.
Yes. That was the time, CMOS Technology got introduced.
It replaced the older technology - Biploar.



IBM claimed that its newer mainframes could reduce data center energy costs for power and cooling, and that they could reduce physical space requirements compared to server farms.

The CMOS mainframes also started with a relatively simple processor design and evolved into a sophisticated RISC-like processor, capable of very efficient execution of the rich and complex z/Architecture.

Many of the improvements in processor design were actually a redeployment of design ideas that had been developed for the bipolar processors that preceded the CMOS-based systems. These include techniques like:

• Superscalar parallelism
• Advanced branch prediction
• High-frequency pipelines, and
• Out-of-order instruction execution

Some of these techniques have had further innovation, like more sophisticated branch-prediction algorithms.

Also, practices have been introduced allowing a RISC-like instruction processor design despite z/Architecture being a complex instruction set architecture.

One interesting technique that enabled this is called instruction “cracking,” whereby complex instructions are decomposed into simpler instructions so they can be efficiently executed on a very high-frequency processor. 

• The first Mainframe with CMOS, IBM 9672 R11 was introduced in 1994 and rated at about 15 MIPS. It was in S/390 Operating system.
• In October 2000, Z series, Z-Architecture got introduced. OS/390 got converted into Z/OS operating system.
• In 2012, zEnterprise EC12 (zEC12) mainframe got introduced and rated at about 1,500 MIPS. That’s a 100-fold increase over about 18 years.

The combination of silicon technology improvements and design advances has led to the explosive growth in CMOS processing power, culminating with the zEC12 and its processor speed of more than 1,500 MIPS.







 

Why z/OS mainframe is the ideal cloud platform?

Fifty years ago,

IBM CEO Thomas Watson Jr. unveiled the System/360

—the first general purpose computing system specifically designed for business—calling it

“The beginning of a new generation,
 Not only of computers,
 but of their applications in business, science and government.”

It was this vision for computing that made possible the creation of

• Bar codes,
• ATMs,
• Electronic stock trading,
• Online travel reservations,
• Weather modeling &
• Countless other inventions that have changed the way the world works.

Watson’s statement is as timely and true today as it was then, in the context of the evolution that’s occurring within IT via cloud computing.

The System/360 ushered in the era of flexibility, adaptability, and economy for IT.

It pioneered the concepts of backward and forward compatibility,
the ability to add capacity as you needed it,
and protecting the client’s investments in their technology, applications and data.

As we talk about the next inevitable phases of cloud, like
platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS),
we encounter some very specific themes and challenges
that cry out for systems with those qualities:

• How do I provide multi-tenancy with the greatest number of people
 sharing the same machine as possible, securely and efficiently?

• How do I dynamically scale an environment immediately without waiting to provision?

• How do I provide each user a unique performance experience

  on the smallest number of systems possible?

• How do I keep track of how much capacity each user is using?

• How do I support thousands of users with a handful of IT professionals?

If there were an ideal operating system that could provide

• Multi-tenancy,
• Dynamic scaling,
• An unique user experience,
• Fine-grained usage monitoring, and
• Support thousands of users with a small group of admins,  

PaaS and SaaS solutions would be simple.

                           Oh wait, there is—z/OS.

What was once only accessible to COBOL and Assembler programmers
is now available to anyone.

Today, a team of young IBM hardware and software developers in Poughkeepsie is creating simple web-based interfaces for z/OS, which will allow any programmer with web development experience to use this powerful platform for PaaS and SaaS.

IBM also continues to refine the technology and the delivery of mainframe computing for cloud applications. The new IBM Enterprise Cloud System can support up to 6,000 virtual machines in a single system, provide a secure multi-tenant environment and dynamically share resources across enterprise workloads, with higher system efficiency and greater scalability that lowers the total cost of Linux cloud deployments by up to 55 percent over comparable x86-based cloud infrastructure.

And the new “IBM MSP Utility Pricing for System z” pricing model, delivered through IBM Global Financing, provides consumption-based pricing designed especially to make mainframe technologies more widely accessible to Managed Service Providers. This consumption-based approach allows MSPs to focus on building their businesses, rather than on the cost of their infrastructure.

These innovations unlock the potential for z/OS and the modern mainframe to be the cloud platform of choice, enabling people to create business solutions built on the most secure, available, reliable cloud infrastructure ever known.

Pat Toole is general manager for IBM’s System z product line.

13 things to know about the new IBM mainframe, the #z13

 

1. Mobile is driving exponential growth in transactions.

By 2018, each mobile consumer is expected to drive 5,000 or

more systems transactions per day and that could quadruple by 2025.

Meanwhile, users expect mobile transactions to be lighting fast and seamless.

The new mainframe supercharges the world’s premier data and

transaction engine for the mobile era and the app economy.

 

2. The z13 features the world’s fastest processor:

300 percent more memory and

100 percent more bandwidth.

 

3. The z13 will deliver transaction response times in milliseconds.

 

4. The new mainframe marks the first time a system is able to process

30,000 transactions per second – the equivalent of 100 Cyber Mondays every day.

 

5. The z13 integrates the ability to deliver real-time transactional scoring,

such as fraud detection and the ability to run high volume online transaction processing,

while running complex query workloads concurrently in the same database

with little to no impact to operational service levels.

The integrated transaction and analytics capability in the z13 allows

 the mainframe to deliver insights at least 17 times faster than the competition

with 13 times the price performance.

 

6. The z13 dramatically increases the speed of data encryption,

with new cryptographic security that

protects the privacy of data from mobile devices to data centers.

 

7. IBM worked with more than 60 mainframe clients to

 ensure that the z13 incorporates the capabilities that enterprises need

to meet today’s demands.

 

8. The z13 features new large-memory configurations.

To help clients exploit this, IBM has overhauled its memory pricing.

Many clients will be able to deploy as much as five times their previous

memory configurations at a price similar to what they paid previously.

 

9. The new mainframe includes new support for Hadoop,

enabling unstructured data to be analyzed in the system.

Other analytics advances include faster acceleration of queries

by adding DB2 BLU for Linux, enhancements to

the IBM DB2 analytics accelerator, and

vastly improved performance for mathematically intense analytics workloads.

 

10. The z13 is the ideal cloud architecture,

legendary for its ability to scale and reliably and

securely handle multiple workloads.

In a scale-out model, it is capable of running up to 8000 virtual servers –

more than 50 virtual servers per core.

 

No other platform can touch that, and for clients,

it means lower software, energy and facilities costs.

 

11. The z13 lowers the cost of running cloud on

the mainframe to almost half the cost of running cloud

on an x86/distributed server environment, while boosting performance by up to 30 percent.

 

12. The z13 is an open platform, fully supporting Linux, OpenStack and more.

 

13. The z13 is so named because it’s the 13th generation of CMOS mainframe.

 

The z13 is a big step into the future for the IBM mainframe,

combining the system’s world-renowned strengths with new capabilities

to manage the soaring growth in mobile,

achieve quicker insights from transactions and

deliver cloud economics at scale without the risk.

Z13 Mainframe Features

Highlights

• More memory, cache enhancements, and improved I/O bandwidth to serve up more data to support exponential mobile transaction volumes.
• Real time insights at the point of impact with integrated analytics and transaction processing.
• Data and services are securely delivered, with minimal risk, on the most reliable platform.

• Improved data resilience with SAN Fabric Priority.
• Enabled for open source innovation.

New market forces are changing the face of every industry, requiring almost every business to transform and embrace digital business. This means supporting existing clients with new services and offerings, while helping new businesses and citizens gain access to products, services and societal benefits. A successful transformation requires an IT infrastructure that is efficient, secure, adaptive, and integrated. It must be designed to handle the explosive growth of increasingly mobile clients, be able to leverage vast amounts of new data, and provide deeper real-time insight at the point for greatest business impact. All deployed within a secure and resilient cloud ready infrastructure.

The IBM z13™ (z13) provides the infrastructure that will help differentiate a refined digital business. It offers the capacity and processing power to improve business performance and growth. The z13 helps better protect sensitive transactions to minimize business risk and client exposure, while helping to deliver on service level agreements for an exceptional customer experience. New economic efficiencies allow the z13 to offer more throughput and capabilities with less impact to the IT budget.

Why IBM is still hot and bothered over mainframes

Its latest offering, the z13, took five years and $1 billion to develop. Now, the computing giant is pitching the technology as crucial for securing and delivering the ‘mobile economy.

To that end, the company just spent five years and more than $1 billion to develop what it bills as the most sophisticated computer on the planet, the z13. The technology was designed in collaboration with 60 of its most strategic mainframe customers. It can scale up to 8,000 virtual services and is capable processing more than 2.5 billion transactions per day. That’s the equivalent of the online shopping volume generated on 100 Cyber Mondays.

You touch a mainframe every day, but you might not even know it,” says Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of the IBM Systems division. Industries that are still particularly dependent on the technology: financial services, telecommunications, and retail.

“They are so embedded in the IT organizations of most enterprises that replacing them is extraordinarily risky, expensive and difficult,” says Richard Fichera, vice president and principal analyst with Forrester Research. “Most mobile transactions result in some access to mainframe-resident data being triggered.”

Matt Eastwood, group vice president for research firm IDC, figures mainframes still represent 10% of annual spending on server technology. “They remain very strong platforms for a variety of mission-critical workloads including business applications, transaction processing, and large data warehouses,” he says.

IBM is also talking up another potential use case: cloud data centers. “IBM often expresses the notion that the mainframe is the ‘original’ cloud, in that the virtualization technologies and automated management tools that are key to cloud computing originated decades ago in mainframe systems,” says another analyst, Charles King, with Pund-IT. It isn’t that common, but there are a few IBM customers who run private clouds using the System z platform, King says.

Over the past month, IBM has disclosed several high-profile cloud “wins.” Many of these deals, such as one with Dutch bank ABN AMRO, build on existing outsourcing contracts. Still, what the computing giant counts as cloud revenue grew 50% for the nine months ended Oct. 31; for 2015, it is projecting $7 billion for this line of business.

Although it hasn’t talked much about the move externally, IBM is restructuring to create customer-centric business units that prioritize its cloud business and several other strategic imperatives, such as Watson business analytics services. There are eight divisions being created, according to a report by Technology Business Research (TBR). The main units include Watson, Analytics, Commerce, Security, Cloud, and Systems. The existing services teams remain relatively intact.

Z13 Mainframe

IBM today officially announced the z13 mainframe platform, loaded with silicon and other hardware innovations to accelerate mobile, analytics and security-driven workloads.







Simultaneous Multi-Threading treats the microprocessor in the same way that an operating system that multi-tasks does," Birtles explained. "It takes multiple tasks and interleaves them such that when one task is busy waiting for an action, the other task can be using the processing pipeline."
IBM has also introduced the Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) model for vector processing. The vector processing model offers the promise of improved processing parallelism that can be particularly useful for analytics.

"Vector processing works on all types of data," Birtles said "This facilitates the ability to bring more data to bear during a transaction in the decision making process."