I can't be the only one that simultaneously appreciates that IBM are still in the game but remains mystified as to who is actually buying and using this stuff.
They simply have to have some farms in government running this to make it make sense.
They simply have to have some farms in government running this to make it make sense.
On the high-end? Banks, airports, hospitals, research labs. There's a lot of places that need the kind of fault tolerance that specifically IBM POWER systems provide
EDIT: Okay, IBM POWER "systems". They've been described as mainframes to me so I went with that terminology
For many years, the 64-bit extension of the original S/360/370/390 architecture was emulated in the software layer via the static binary translation – just like the i Series AS/400 have been doing since the inception, and there was no native S/360 implementation in silicon for a fairly long time.
If my understanding is correct, with TELUM processors, IBM has gone back to implementing the ISA in silicon, although the available details on TELUM are scarce.
The eCLIPz project, for the POWER6 & Z10[0].
"The z10 processor was co-developed with and shares many design traits with the POWER6 processor, such as fabrication technology, logic design, execution unit, floating-point units, bus technology (GX bus) and pipeline design style, i.e., a high frequency, low latency, deep (14 stages in the z10), in-order pipeline.
However, the processors are quite dissimilar in other respects, such as cache hierarchy and coherency, SMP topology and protocol, and chip organization."[1]
IBM z15 mainframes had z15 chip now they have Tellum. z chips are their own line. z14, z13, ...
I think a more realistic case is the visa and MasterCard credit card networks that have almost 0% downtime.
One of my Summer intern jobs was to run backups every few days on a AS/400 system.
That "seat" was the old one that was yet to be collected.
Back then their model lineup ranged from the small size like you mention to approx 3 or 4 refrigerator size at the high end.
When I did some system work out at Costco in the 90's they had 4 of the largest models connected together in one system image (sysplex I think).
The smallest iSeries I've seen was essentially an "oversize tower PC" form factor.
For AS/400 (IBM i), they're POWER, but come in pretty small models like IBM Power S1012, it's available as "deskside", i.e. a big tower.
Payments processed by the payment terminals handle the authorization of the payments separately from any store servers, usually through a service such as Connected Payments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_i#TIMI
To illustrate why the AS/400 had its market niche, the Cali Cartel had a very successful installation of an AS/400. Apparently they used it to do both "business analytics" and back-office tasks.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-cartel-supercomputer-of-...
The software translation layer has been a feature of the platform dating back to the System/38 days, and was specifically intended to allow the CPU architecture to change without breaking software compatibility.
IBM i also has the "PASE" layer, which is a binary compatibility layer for AIX. Those applications do not use the translation layer.
I suppose the military should buy a significant amount, because they require 100% US-based development and manufacture.
Also, how does “plenty” compare to the millions (50 million or so, it seems from a quick search) x64s that Intel sells per year? Do they even sell 1% of that?