IBM did make an attempt to 'offload' some workloads from z to Intel and System p with the zBX. There weren't many takers for this. My 2 cents worth - using the I/O drawers may impact power/cooling requirements and other infrastructure within the z frame(s). Having onboard 'accelerators' on the z chip seems to be the current trend.
Regards Parwez Hamid​ ________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of Dave Jones <d...@vsoft-software.com> Sent: 21 August 2022 19:17 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> Subject: Once upon a time...... IBM was known for making some really nice scientific number-crunching systems. The 7090-7094, the S/360-195 and the follow-on s/370-195, the array processor 3838 and the vector instruction set supported by the 30xx models come to mind. Over time, and with the rise of the Intel-based chips and their floating point capabilities, IBM decided not to pursue that market any more. Now I am wondering if, perhaps, the time is right for IBM to re-consider that decision. On modern z processors, we already have IEEE floating point instructions in the hardware, Linux (a popular options for Intel-base number-crunch systems), and support for PCI.e IBM is already allowing 3rd-party SSD drives to be attached and accessed by the o/s. What if we were able to connect a number, say, 40, of GPU cards (like the Nvida Tesla 1000) to a z box. Have the I/O system pass the GPU card directly an LPAR running on the system. Porting the CUDO drives over to Linux (or z/OS, or CMS for that matter) does not appear to be that difficult and the hardware changes should be transparent to the o/s. Linux already supports a large number of scientific. software applications, runs the latest versions of popular scientific languages (FORTRAN, C/C++, Python). I believe the IBM z would be well-suited to this, as the density of cards in the PCIe cages is far greater than the density that could be obtained in normal PCs. This, combined with the strong sysplex clustering ability of z/OS (or SSI on z/VM) could allow the system Z platform to pack more computing power into a smaller footprint than a comparable Intel-based Linux cluster system, while being easier to use as programs would not have to be rewritten to take advantage of the system's clustering. It might be an easy sell on it's energy-reduction assets alone, since everyone is now worried about how much energy data-centers now consume. Thoughts/comments/objections welcome, of course. Full disclosure: this idea was first suggested to me by Enzo Damato after his tour of the POK lab. DJ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
