Posted on Thursday, February 28 2008 @ 21:55 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
IBM
announced its new System z10 mainframe computer, this system features the firm's new z10 processors. These chips feature five quad-core die packages and two service cores. The 20 cores are clocked at 4.4GHz and feature 60MB of L2 cache and 48MB of shared L3 cache on a single processors.
The new z10 is equal to nearly 1,500 x86 servers in performance and requires up to 85% less power and requires up to 85% less floor space. IBM also says that the system allows the consolidation of x86 software license at up to a 30:1 ratio.
The z10 utilizes 64 purpose-built quad-core processors for performance and is scalable enough to support hundreds to hundreds of thousands of users according to IBM. The server will support a wide range of workloads including Linux, XML, Java, WebSphere and IBM is working with Sun to bring Solaris to the z10.
IBM describes that 991 million transistor processor as a four-core processor with 3MB of L2 cache per core. The company claims the chip can operate in excess of 4.4 GHz. A separate, dedicated "service" processor adds 24MB of L3 cache, sharable among all the processor cores.
The IBM System z10 starts at about $1 million.
