With the addition of x86-blades the mainframes from IBM (NYSE:IBM) that originally date back to 1952 has been given a new lease of life. Until last summer you had to run OS or Linux directly on the mainframe processor, but IBM added blades with support for AIX and Linux and now comes support for Windows.
The unique thing about all this is that it will allow customers to run different workloads on different CPU architectures depending on the amount of horsepower needed, but all under the IBM mainframe control.
Running a workload on an x86 blade in a mainframe can make a lot of sense, if the workload is critical, but does not require all that many resources as the licenses for running the workload on the Intel Architecture typically will be a lot cheaper than the mainframe licenses.
The official debut is set for December 16 according to sources that SemiAccurate have spoken with at IBM, but we thought that you’d like to know now – just in case you are planning on a new Windows computer and were not looking in the mainframe direction.S|A
Mads Ølholm
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