7 ms·

IBM Power10’s Memory Inception Clustering (2021)

41 points by tony-allan 4y ago

naikrovek 4y ago
I am kind of annoyed that I am just now learning about how mainframes are designed in 2022, at a time when it is IMPOSSIBLE to dip a toe into the water without already having a job doing the work. No free developer OS distributions or licenses, (so no way to run them on an emulator), no freely available emulators for modern hardware & OS releases, nothing. Mainframe vendors, I feel, are kind of shooting themselves in the foot with this "screw the developers, they gotta PAY" mentality around this insanely expensive mainframe kit. How am I ever to learn this stuff well enough to advocate for it at work, if I can't use it and learn it in my own time? This feels like step 0 in trying to bring users to a platform, dying or not. This article and others all show that a lot of the capabilities and redundancy requirements that we are trying to develop in PC architectures (amd64, arm64 & RISCV; are there more?) have been present in mainframes for decades, and that's an exciting thing to learn, not just because I want to write software that runs on reliable hardware, but because as a nerd this is... like ...TURBO interesting! IBM and HP just block any newbies from doing anything of value because they're stuck in 1960s & 1970s pricing paradigms back when mainframes were all there was, so you HAD to pay if you wanted to compute at scale. This whole situation bothers me. This is very neat technology and it's behind a massive paywall that no end-user could ever afford without a very large windfall.
- js8 4y ago
  As somebody developing on z/OS, I feel for you, and I am not alone. It sucks not to be able to run those systems as a hobby. (Although I don't think the pricing model is the culprit necessarily, companies are willing to pay a lot for the clouds too.) The mainframes are also becoming more opaque as time goes on, IBM is less willing to publicly document OS and HW internals, and they are less customizable than they used to be. But that's the business trend, and life, I guess. But yeah, the article reminded me of the new cache architecture on z16, where many processors can share their L2 caches to have a single coherent cache.
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    > Although I don't think the pricing model is the culprit necessarily, companies are willing to pay a lot for the clouds too. yes, but that's a lot of small, cheap bits all put together. the minimum required to get going on the cloud is $0. with a mainframe, there is a minimum amount of hardware required and that amount of hardware costs 6-7 figures, USD$. > new cache architecture on z16, where many processors can share their L2 caches to have a single coherent cache. as a PC person my entire career, that is a mind-blowing thing to read. the interconnections required to make that perform well enough to be useful must be insane. I WANNA PLAY, DAMMIT lol
    - js8 4y ago
      https://www.anandtech.com/show/16924/did-ibm-just-preview-the-future-of-caches https://www.anandtech.com/show/16924/did-ibm-just-preview-th... I think if it works out, it will eventually come to PCs as well.
      - naikrovek 4y ago
        well the z16 is out, so someone knows if the 40% performance improvement per core is true or not. if you were trying to dampen my enthusiasm for learning mainframe technology, you've failed, sir (or madam).
  - icedchai 4y ago
    You can run z/OS on the Hercules emulator. It is a violation of the license, however I doubt that will bother a hobbyist much. Here's someone's blog explaining how: https://famicoman.com/2018/06/28/emulating-a-z-os-mainframe-with-hercules/ https://famicoman.com/2018/06/28/emulating-a-z-os-mainframe-...
    - naikrovek 4y ago
      yes, an old version of zOS that you can't download without a license, and I have zero idea how to even install the OS. I want something official, supported, and free or cheap to acquire and free to use for (at least) development.
- protomyth 4y ago
  I dearly wish IBM would have a low cost box that allowed programmers to get familiar with the machines. At this point, their whole business is really reliant on existing companies. It doesn't even have to have all of the fancy hardware, just enough to get an actual environment up. This goes for the i Series as well as the z.
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    yes, exactly. encourage innovation here, please, IBM & HP. accessibility is key
  - wmf 4y ago
    Their "low cost" option is a $5,500 emulator. https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/28/ibm_mainframe_test_dev_environment/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/28/ibm_mainframe_test_de...
    - naikrovek 4y ago
      not exactly "low cost" to anyone I know.
      - krylon 4y ago
        Not to a hobbyist, unfortunately, especially when Hercules does the job just as well (AFAIK, at least) and is free. Compared to what you pay for the hardware and a support contract and the OS license, it is practically free. But I don't understand why IBM doesn't just run z/VM on a mainframe and allows hobbyists to run their own VM with an operating system of their choice. Doesn't even have to be free! Five or ten bucks a month for one or two vCPUs and a GiB of RAM would be acceptable to me. I get that due to the high profit margins[0], mainframes are a real cash cow for IBM, but it's sad they complete ignore the low-end market to preserve those margins. [0] Last I heard, the mainframe divisions generates 10% of IBM's revenue, but 25% of the profits, so those margins must be juicy.
  - neverartful 4y ago
    I agree. However, I believe that there are some within IBM and also at customer mainframe shops who like it this way because they believe there's an additional layer of security through obscurity.
- Quequau 4y ago
  I go through this experience every time HotChips releases their talks on YouTube.
- nix23 4y ago
  >No free developer OS distributions or licenses, (so no way to run them on an emulator), no freely available emulators for modern hardware & OS releases, nothing. Distro: https://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/ https://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/ Update to Distro: http://www.prince-webdesign.nl/index.php/software/update-on-mvs-turnkey-4 http://www.prince-webdesign.nl/index.php/software/update-on-... Emulator: https://github.com/SDL-Hercules-390/hyperion https://github.com/SDL-Hercules-390/hyperion It's a MVS TK4- distribution and probably 99% of a z/OS functionality plus it's Public Domain. Or VM/370 another Public Domain OS from IBM: http://www.vm370.org/vm http://www.vm370.org/vm Or even better you run MVS TK4- inside VM/370...for the real taste ;) But if you really really want z/OS (i have no clue why you would do that) you click here: https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/zxplore https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/zxplore (Formerly know as Master the Mainframe) And some yt's to have a little base-knowledge (mostly MVS and VM/370): https://www.youtube.com/c/moshix https://www.youtube.com/c/moshix
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    here we go, thank you!
  - js8 4y ago
    > It's a MVS TK4- distribution and probably 99% of a z/OS functionality plus it's Public Domain. MVS TK4- is very old compared to z/OS. It's like comparing Berkeley Unix to Linux. Yeah, the system calls are similar but there is so much missing. Not to mention, to understand mainframes, you really need access to the whole SW ecosystem, which includes stuff like DB2, CICS, MQ, IMS.. these are building blocks for applications.
    - nix23 4y ago
      True, but you can install KICKS instead of CICS ;) But you are right, if you want that, got to zexplore. If you want a taste of Mainframes then MVS and VM/370 are a excellent starting point. BTW: If you understand "Berkeley Unix...whatever that is" then Linux is a piece of cake...not that ~much has changed.
    - naikrovek 4y ago
- wmf 4y ago
  Obligatory "Power is not mainframe" reminder.
  - nix23 4y ago
    Power is Mainframe (the cores are power) too, with a OS/370 Microcode layer on top of it, with a layer of z/VM Microcode Code on top that (for LPARS etc), and then the installed z/OS or Z/VM and inside Z/VM a Z/OS, Z/VSE OR yes really another Z/VM. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jOlO1vSBzE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jOlO1vSBzE >we run MVS 3.8 on top of VM/370, on top of zLinux, on top of z/VM, on top of an LPAR, on a real iron IBM mainframe.
    - wmf 4y ago
      None of this is correct.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - js8 4y ago
      Mainframe CPUs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Telum_(microprocessor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Telum_(microprocessor) for instance) are physically different processors than Power. (Although it is likely that IBM shares the many internal design parts among both of these.)
      - nix23 4y ago
        Yes they are NOT PowerCPU's but the core's are based on the power architecture with ++ and secret sauce.
        wmf 4y ago
        There's really not that much shared between Power and z cores.
- tony-allan 4y ago
  I learnt assembly language programming on a stackless IBM mainframe. Writing MVS OS extensions on a machine with magical hardware diagnostic support.

41 points by tony-allan 4y ago

I am kind of annoyed that I am just now learning about how mainframes are designed in 2022, at a time when it is IMPOSSIBLE to dip a toe into the water without already having a job doing the work. No free developer OS distributions or licenses, (so no way to run them on an emulator), no freely available emulators for modern hardware & OS releases, nothing. Mainframe vendors, I feel, are kind of shooting themselves in the foot with this "screw the developers, they gotta PAY" mentality around this insanely expensive mainframe kit. How am I ever to learn this stuff well enough to advocate for it at work, if I can't use it and learn it in my own time? This feels like step 0 in trying to bring users to a platform, dying or not. This article and others all show that a lot of the capabilities and redundancy requirements that we are trying to develop in PC architectures (amd64, arm64 & RISCV; are there more?) have been present in mainframes for decades, and that's an exciting thing to learn, not just because I want to write software that runs on reliable hardware, but because as a nerd this is... like ...TURBO interesting! IBM and HP just block any newbies from doing anything of value because they're stuck in 1960s & 1970s pricing paradigms back when mainframes were all there was, so you HAD to pay if you wanted to compute at scale. This whole situation bothers me. This is very neat technology and it's behind a massive paywall that no end-user could ever afford without a very large windfall.

js8 4y ago
As somebody developing on z/OS, I feel for you, and I am not alone. It sucks not to be able to run those systems as a hobby. (Although I don't think the pricing model is the culprit necessarily, companies are willing to pay a lot for the clouds too.) The mainframes are also becoming more opaque as time goes on, IBM is less willing to publicly document OS and HW internals, and they are less customizable than they used to be. But that's the business trend, and life, I guess. But yeah, the article reminded me of the new cache architecture on z16, where many processors can share their L2 caches to have a single coherent cache.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  > Although I don't think the pricing model is the culprit necessarily, companies are willing to pay a lot for the clouds too. yes, but that's a lot of small, cheap bits all put together. the minimum required to get going on the cloud is $0. with a mainframe, there is a minimum amount of hardware required and that amount of hardware costs 6-7 figures, USD$. > new cache architecture on z16, where many processors can share their L2 caches to have a single coherent cache. as a PC person my entire career, that is a mind-blowing thing to read. the interconnections required to make that perform well enough to be useful must be insane. I WANNA PLAY, DAMMIT lol
  - js8 4y ago
    https://www.anandtech.com/show/16924/did-ibm-just-preview-the-future-of-caches https://www.anandtech.com/show/16924/did-ibm-just-preview-th... I think if it works out, it will eventually come to PCs as well.
    - naikrovek 4y ago
      well the z16 is out, so someone knows if the 40% performance improvement per core is true or not. if you were trying to dampen my enthusiasm for learning mainframe technology, you've failed, sir (or madam).
- icedchai 4y ago
  You can run z/OS on the Hercules emulator. It is a violation of the license, however I doubt that will bother a hobbyist much. Here's someone's blog explaining how: https://famicoman.com/2018/06/28/emulating-a-z-os-mainframe-with-hercules/ https://famicoman.com/2018/06/28/emulating-a-z-os-mainframe-...
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    yes, an old version of zOS that you can't download without a license, and I have zero idea how to even install the OS. I want something official, supported, and free or cheap to acquire and free to use for (at least) development.
protomyth 4y ago
I dearly wish IBM would have a low cost box that allowed programmers to get familiar with the machines. At this point, their whole business is really reliant on existing companies. It doesn't even have to have all of the fancy hardware, just enough to get an actual environment up. This goes for the i Series as well as the z.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  yes, exactly. encourage innovation here, please, IBM & HP. accessibility is key
- wmf 4y ago
  Their "low cost" option is a $5,500 emulator. https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/28/ibm_mainframe_test_dev_environment/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/28/ibm_mainframe_test_de...
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    not exactly "low cost" to anyone I know.
    - krylon 4y ago
      Not to a hobbyist, unfortunately, especially when Hercules does the job just as well (AFAIK, at least) and is free. Compared to what you pay for the hardware and a support contract and the OS license, it is practically free. But I don't understand why IBM doesn't just run z/VM on a mainframe and allows hobbyists to run their own VM with an operating system of their choice. Doesn't even have to be free! Five or ten bucks a month for one or two vCPUs and a GiB of RAM would be acceptable to me. I get that due to the high profit margins[0], mainframes are a real cash cow for IBM, but it's sad they complete ignore the low-end market to preserve those margins. [0] Last I heard, the mainframe divisions generates 10% of IBM's revenue, but 25% of the profits, so those margins must be juicy.
- neverartful 4y ago
  I agree. However, I believe that there are some within IBM and also at customer mainframe shops who like it this way because they believe there's an additional layer of security through obscurity.
Quequau 4y ago
I go through this experience every time HotChips releases their talks on YouTube.
nix23 4y ago
>No free developer OS distributions or licenses, (so no way to run them on an emulator), no freely available emulators for modern hardware & OS releases, nothing. Distro: https://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/ https://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/ Update to Distro: http://www.prince-webdesign.nl/index.php/software/update-on-mvs-turnkey-4 http://www.prince-webdesign.nl/index.php/software/update-on-... Emulator: https://github.com/SDL-Hercules-390/hyperion https://github.com/SDL-Hercules-390/hyperion It's a MVS TK4- distribution and probably 99% of a z/OS functionality plus it's Public Domain. Or VM/370 another Public Domain OS from IBM: http://www.vm370.org/vm http://www.vm370.org/vm Or even better you run MVS TK4- inside VM/370...for the real taste ;) But if you really really want z/OS (i have no clue why you would do that) you click here: https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/zxplore https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/zxplore (Formerly know as Master the Mainframe) And some yt's to have a little base-knowledge (mostly MVS and VM/370): https://www.youtube.com/c/moshix https://www.youtube.com/c/moshix
- naikrovek 4y ago
  here we go, thank you!
- js8 4y ago
  > It's a MVS TK4- distribution and probably 99% of a z/OS functionality plus it's Public Domain. MVS TK4- is very old compared to z/OS. It's like comparing Berkeley Unix to Linux. Yeah, the system calls are similar but there is so much missing. Not to mention, to understand mainframes, you really need access to the whole SW ecosystem, which includes stuff like DB2, CICS, MQ, IMS.. these are building blocks for applications.
  - nix23 4y ago
    True, but you can install KICKS instead of CICS ;) But you are right, if you want that, got to zexplore. If you want a taste of Mainframes then MVS and VM/370 are a excellent starting point. BTW: If you understand "Berkeley Unix...whatever that is" then Linux is a piece of cake...not that ~much has changed.
  - naikrovek 4y ago
wmf 4y ago
Obligatory "Power is not mainframe" reminder.
- nix23 4y ago
  Power is Mainframe (the cores are power) too, with a OS/370 Microcode layer on top of it, with a layer of z/VM Microcode Code on top that (for LPARS etc), and then the installed z/OS or Z/VM and inside Z/VM a Z/OS, Z/VSE OR yes really another Z/VM. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jOlO1vSBzE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jOlO1vSBzE >we run MVS 3.8 on top of VM/370, on top of zLinux, on top of z/VM, on top of an LPAR, on a real iron IBM mainframe.
  - wmf 4y ago
    None of this is correct.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - js8 4y ago
    Mainframe CPUs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Telum_(microprocessor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Telum_(microprocessor) for instance) are physically different processors than Power. (Although it is likely that IBM shares the many internal design parts among both of these.)
    - nix23 4y ago
      Yes they are NOT PowerCPU's but the core's are based on the power architecture with ++ and secret sauce.
      - wmf 4y ago
        There's really not that much shared between Power and z cores.
tony-allan 4y ago
I learnt assembly language programming on a stackless IBM mainframe. Writing MVS OS extensions on a machine with magical hardware diagnostic support.