August 29, 2012 at 14:12IBM zEC12 mainframe with 5.5 GHz processors and transactional memory
In fact, IBM has been producing mainframes for cloud services for several decades, although previously the “cloud” had other names. In connection with the current fashion, for the first time, IBM inserted the words Elastic Cloud directly into the name of the mainframe.
The new IBM zEnterprise EC12 mainframe has a modular design and impressive technical features :
- The world's fastest processor, six cores with a frequency of 5.5 GHz. Active cores can be configured as central processing units (CP), processors for virtual Linux machines - Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL), processors for applications (zAAP), integrated information processors (zIIP), Internal Coupling Facility (ICF).
- Cryptographic Express4S cryptographic coprocessor for each core on the main processor, performs data compression tasks and specific cryptographic tasks, with built-in support for AES, SHA, DES algorithms. In the previous IBM z196 mainframe model, one coprocessor came in two cores, so some progress has been made.
- Storage media on SSDs (first in IBM mainframes) using the new Flash Express technology to improve performance.
- Transactional memory was first implemented in conventional IBM servers, before it was used only when creating the IBM Blue Gene supercomputer for developing nuclear weapons at Livermore National Laboratory. E. Lawrence (by the way, Blue Gene is still the most powerful supercomputer in the world.
- Enhanced support for virtualization: you can make a multi-platform data center with thousands of Linux virtual machines on one mainframe.
In zEC12, transactional memory is used to perform simultaneous operations on the same data set, for example, when processing exchange transactions on the same set of accounts.
In the lower right corner of the diagram there is a place for elements of a water cooling system.
One “book” with the MCM multiprocessor module in the case for water cooling and memory.
The logical structure of the "book".
