4 ms·

IBM - mainframe - Zxx CPUs, what decade is this?!

by NitpickLawyer 2y ago

rbanffy 2y ago
One where no other company has pushed out a processor that can borrow cache from neighbors.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
rubyfan 2y ago
One where legacy businesses still use the cobol programs developed in prior decades. I recently had to wait two quarters to launch a product because the only person who knew what some cobol accounting program did was out on leave. This is one of the many reasons many big corporations fail to innovate. It is very hard (near impossible) to implement new systems in an environment dominated by old ones (not talking only about software and hardware here, also organizational dynamics).
- Koshkin 2y ago
  I don’t think you necessarily need a mainframe in order to run a program written in COBOL. (There’s also emulation available, to accommodate worst case scenarios.)
  - jabl 2y ago
    There's even a COBOL frontend in GCC these days! That being said, the problem isn't so much the COBOL language itself but rather that all the software written in it is connected to all kinds of database system, messaging systems(?) and whatnot, making it very hard to move to some non-mainframe platform even if a customer so chooses. Or to put it another way, it's cheaper to pay even the very high prices to IBM to keep on the mainframe track rather than to migrate.
- spratzt 2y ago
  You’re absolutely right about the organizational dynamics. Many mangers in large companies, derive their status and power from a knowledge of existing business processes and procedures. Any substantive changes to those procedures obviously represent an existential threat to that position and they generally resist it, often very vigorously.
speed_spread 2y ago
It's the decade where it all comes crashing down and you're going back to COBOL.
- Koshkin 2y ago
  COBOL? If such time comes, we’d be lucky to even need the abacus.
  - speed_spread 2y ago
    If we're leaving civilisation altogether, an abacus is just an ammo clip for a slingshot.
  - Woodi 2y ago
    Nope. How many times companies was forced to pay for MS Windows, OEM or not ? That COBOL apps and os'es used there are all already payd production quality software from XX dot 50's and all that is needed, sometimes, is to put in new piece of hardware. That is totally other civilisation. Ok, I may be colorizing but this is a general concept. Don't mention 100 years of "software modifications" because windows ecosystem can't win that contest anyway.
cess11 2y ago
Most organisations never come across a problem that requires neatly clustered high-end hardware. "[T]he IBM Telum II processors are eight cores running at 5.5GHz and with a 360MB virtual L3 cache and 2.88GB virtual L4 cache. Telum II brings a new data processing unit, I/O advancements, and other features to help accelerate AI workloads." But if you do, if you actually have such massive data streams and low tolerance for latencies that sharding them over many machines costs a lot in overhead and throughput slows down intolerably at load peaks, then these machines are most likely a bargain. They allow you to do things very few other can do, resulting in a moat around your business and locks you in with IBM. Or you've been around since the seventies and your software largely consists of COBOL, Fortran and assembly for this line of architectures, and it would cost you two decades of the great rewrite while all your developers do very little else, then it's also a bargain to be able to stay in business.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  The reasoning is like a choice between buying a single box for 10 million, or buying a hundred box cluster for 2 million, then spend 10 million carefully tuning all your software to run your workload on that 2 million cluster.
khaledh 2y ago
One where banks, credit card networks, insurance companies, government, etc. need to process millions of transactions per second on a single mission critical box with unmatched redundancy, resilience, and security, and with a support army backing it.
hagbard_c 2y ago
The one where the chips used in those mainframes have the edge on those used in servers in some important ways - more cache, higher cache bandwidth, lower cache latency. Those developments will eventually make their way into server chips and with a bit of luck IBM (et al) will have developed something else by that time which will eventually enter mainstream.

IBM - mainframe - Zxx CPUs, what decade is this?!

rbanffy 2y ago

One where no other company has pushed out a processor that can borrow cache from neighbors.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

rubyfan 2y ago

One where legacy businesses still use the cobol programs developed in prior decades. I recently had to wait two quarters to launch a product because the only person who knew what some cobol accounting program did was out on leave. This is one of the many reasons many big corporations fail to innovate. It is very hard (near impossible) to implement new systems in an environment dominated by old ones (not talking only about software and hardware here, also organizational dynamics).

Koshkin 2y ago
I don’t think you necessarily need a mainframe in order to run a program written in COBOL. (There’s also emulation available, to accommodate worst case scenarios.)
- jabl 2y ago
  There's even a COBOL frontend in GCC these days! That being said, the problem isn't so much the COBOL language itself but rather that all the software written in it is connected to all kinds of database system, messaging systems(?) and whatnot, making it very hard to move to some non-mainframe platform even if a customer so chooses. Or to put it another way, it's cheaper to pay even the very high prices to IBM to keep on the mainframe track rather than to migrate.
spratzt 2y ago
You’re absolutely right about the organizational dynamics. Many mangers in large companies, derive their status and power from a knowledge of existing business processes and procedures. Any substantive changes to those procedures obviously represent an existential threat to that position and they generally resist it, often very vigorously.

speed_spread 2y ago

It's the decade where it all comes crashing down and you're going back to COBOL.

Koshkin 2y ago
COBOL? If such time comes, we’d be lucky to even need the abacus.
- speed_spread 2y ago
  If we're leaving civilisation altogether, an abacus is just an ammo clip for a slingshot.
- Woodi 2y ago
  Nope. How many times companies was forced to pay for MS Windows, OEM or not ? That COBOL apps and os'es used there are all already payd production quality software from XX dot 50's and all that is needed, sometimes, is to put in new piece of hardware. That is totally other civilisation. Ok, I may be colorizing but this is a general concept. Don't mention 100 years of "software modifications" because windows ecosystem can't win that contest anyway.

cess11 2y ago

Most organisations never come across a problem that requires neatly clustered high-end hardware. "[T]he IBM Telum II processors are eight cores running at 5.5GHz and with a 360MB virtual L3 cache and 2.88GB virtual L4 cache. Telum II brings a new data processing unit, I/O advancements, and other features to help accelerate AI workloads." But if you do, if you actually have such massive data streams and low tolerance for latencies that sharding them over many machines costs a lot in overhead and throughput slows down intolerably at load peaks, then these machines are most likely a bargain. They allow you to do things very few other can do, resulting in a moat around your business and locks you in with IBM. Or you've been around since the seventies and your software largely consists of COBOL, Fortran and assembly for this line of architectures, and it would cost you two decades of the great rewrite while all your developers do very little else, then it's also a bargain to be able to stay in business.

rbanffy 2y ago
The reasoning is like a choice between buying a single box for 10 million, or buying a hundred box cluster for 2 million, then spend 10 million carefully tuning all your software to run your workload on that 2 million cluster.

khaledh 2y ago

One where banks, credit card networks, insurance companies, government, etc. need to process millions of transactions per second on a single mission critical box with unmatched redundancy, resilience, and security, and with a support army backing it.

hagbard_c 2y ago

The one where the chips used in those mainframes have the edge on those used in servers in some important ways - more cache, higher cache bandwidth, lower cache latency. Those developments will eventually make their way into server chips and with a bit of luck IBM (et al) will have developed something else by that time which will eventually enter mainstream.