4 ms·

I'd be curious to know what a modern day IBM mainframe can do, just out of idle interest.

• djcapelis 11y ago
  Here you go: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/hardware/z13_specs.html http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/hardware/z13_specs.html And the microprocessor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_z13_(microprocessor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_z13_(microprocessor)
  • rasur 11y ago
    Thanks for the pointers, it's been a while since I've actually used an IBM mainframe in anger, it's interesting to see what the latest state of things is.
• kens 11y ago
  Probably a whole lot worse than custom mining hardware. The custom ASICs are crazy optimized for mining. Unfortunately I don't have access to a modern mainframe to try it out.
  • rasur 11y ago
    Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? You sink that much investment into a mainframe, you're going to be having better things to do with them than mine bitcoin. Although, yet another idle thought; maybe IBM themselves have 'tested' a machine, if anyone. EDIT: typos,grammar.
    • jacquesm 11y ago
      Why on earth would they do that, the depreciation on the machine would be higher than the amount of $ generated that way and that's ignoring the cost of the energy and the facility to host it. It would make absolutely no sense.
      • meric 11y ago
        I read 'tested' as a few minutes, for fun, experimental purposes rather than profit.
        • rasur 11y ago
          Yes, that was my intention with 'tested'. I'm sure IBM have the resources to jazz up something a bit more application specific if they really wanted.
    • gaius 11y ago
      You buy a mainframe for the I/O it can do, not the computation (for which you'd want a supercomputer).
      • deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        • gaius 11y ago
          If you need to to lots of relatively simple things very quickly but also very reliably. You'd not use a supercomputer to process credit card transactions for example, you'd want a mainframe for that. And you wouldn't use a mainframe for weather forecasting.
      • rasur 11y ago
        Oh I realise that, I used to use them, I do roughly recall their benefits ;) I was just asking out of idle curiosity, nothing more.
• aus_ 11y ago
  Modern mainframes have an optional cryptographic coprocessor addon. The hardware, or cryptocard [1], is specialized to provide high-throughput for common cryptographic functions, including SHA-256. (It does lots more than that too.) The latest cryptocard available is the Crypto Express5S [2] and is compatible with z13s. And since modern mainframes can run Linux natively (s390x), you could probably get popular CPU miners to run. Albeit, you'd have to recompile for s390x and provide patches to utilize CPACF [3]. I could never find any SHA-256 hash rates for the Crypto Express5S, but if you really wanted to mine bitcoins on a mainframe, this would be the way to go. [1]: http://www-03.ibm.com/security/cryptocards/pciecc/overview.shtml http://www-03.ibm.com/security/cryptocards/pciecc/overview.s... [2]: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/hardware/z13_specs.html http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/hardware/z13_specs.html [3]: https://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/linuxonibm/com.ibm.linux.z.wskc.doc/wskc_c_s02cpacf.html https://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/linuxonibm/co...
  • TylerE 11y ago
    CPU mining hasn't been relevant for years.
    • tromp 11y ago
      I'm hoping Cuckoo Cycle can change that (https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo)
    • joshu 11y ago
      You didn't really understand what he said.