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If you think your den is starting to look a little cramped, it is as nothing compared to data centres. In the face of ever greater demands for compute power, organisations are attempting to squeeze the equivalent of a pint into a quart pot. IBM believes it has the answer via two new products: compact versions of its z17 mainframe and LinuxONE portfolio.
“The number of mission-critical workloads is rising at an incredible pace, forcing organisations to make tough decisions about performance, AI integration, and infrastructure footprint,” said Tom McPherson, General Manager, IBM Z and LinuxONE.
“With these new IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE systems, we’re making it easier to run workloads where they make the most sense, while opening the door for a wider range of organisations to benefit from these technologies for the first time.”
Especially as IBM is targeting costs at the same time as space.
There are two new IBM z17 models, with the promise of up to 82 cores and 18TB of memory across two processor drawers. IBM claims that equates to a 20% increase in core count and 12% increase in memory capacity.
First up, the IBM z17 single frame. This is “a fully packaged solution”, according to IBM, which comes preloaded in a rack with intelligent power distribution units (iPDUs). The idea is that it’s delivered ready to go. IBM adds that it now has “the added flexibility for clients to co-locate other technologies within the frame”.
Next, the IBM z17 rack mount. This is designed for organisations that already have their own racks but would like to slot an IBM z17 system alongside their existing rack servers and storage.
Here are the core specs:
We covered the IBM LinuxONE 5 range on its launch next year. In short, these come pre-configured with your choice of Linux (such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and are designed for AI tasks. They’re modular, ready for you to add more AI accelerators, memory or storage as required.
They have penguin-inspired names, with last year’s new entrant being the Emperor. This time, we have the IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 5. Again, it’s scalable with a multiple drawer setup. And it’s available in both single frame and rack mount configs.
If want to run a smaller set of workloads in-house, consider the IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 5 rack mount and Express offerings. These promise confidential computing and “on-chip AI acceleration in a compact 18U configuration”, IBM claims.
To be precise, IBM promises that moving “an AI-infused OLTP containerised application and database in a virtual machine running on x86 servers to an IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 5” will deliver:
IBM claims that the Rockhopper 5 systems offer “a cost-efficient entry point that can scale as business grows”, with exact pricing to come on its general availability come August 12, 2026. The same date that the new z17 single frame and rack mount configurations will become available.
For the latest information, head to the homepages for the IBM z17 and LinuxONE 5.
