IBM’s New z16 Aims for the Cloud; Delivers Quantum-safe Cryptography & AI on-Chip Inferencing
IBM has once again outdone itself with its latest z16 mainframe server.
This latest offering has it all: unbreakable security; fast low-latency performance; top notch, easy-to-use analytics and true fault tolerant reliability that provides the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) and immediate return on investment (ROI) among 15 mainstream servers, industrywide.
The new IBM z16 delivers a cornucopia of embedded, and enhanced functions. This includes hardened security, leading edge AI and performance improvements. The result: the z16 delivers even greater cost efficiencies and a solid “seven nines” – 99.99999% – of uptime and reliability. The AI on-chip inferencing is icing on the cake. It makes readily accessible for all employees — not just data scientists.
The IBM z16 is indisputably the most powerful enterprise system from the zSystems family, to date. It incorporates 7nm technology with clock speeds of 5.2GHz, and it supports a maximum of 200 cores and up to 40TB of memory. According to IBM, this results in 25% more processor capacity per drawer and an 11% per core performance improvement. Overall, IBM said the z16 will deliver 40% better performance than the prior z15 models. And it’s engineered for hybrid cloud environments and provides interoperability with a wide range of environments including Linux and open source.
As impressive as those performance statistics are, the immediate and strategic impact of the IBM z16 is far more than a laundry list of “speeds and feeds.”
In a pre-briefing with analysts Ross Mauri, General Manager of IBM zSystems and LinuxONE, said IBM designed the IBM z16 to address enterprise customers’ need for top notch system performance, resiliency, security/data privacy and protection; dedicated workload accelerators and optimization across IBM’s entire product stack. Barry Baker, VP of Product Management for IBM zSystems said the openness of the IBM z16 enterprise system in supporting multiple operating system environments including Linux, z/OS and a variety of open source distributions like Ubuntu is a win for customers.
Mauri and Baker said the IBM z16 delivers automation, predictive and security capabilities across environments to help enterprise customers on their journey to hybrid cloud and AI. “We are focused on the entire ecosystem. IBM’s strategy has the zSystems platform integrated throughout our products and services offerings to build more value to our clients,” Mauri said.
IBM’s z16 addresses all of the hot button issues confronting organizations in the digital age: AI; performance and low latency; resiliency/security; hybrid cloud; workload optimization; cost efficiencies; interoperability and application modernization.
IBM z16 Quantum Cryptographic Security and AI on-chip Inferencing
The IBM z16 also includes several ground-breaking technology “firsts.” Two of the most noteworthy are the AI on-chip inferencing function and the quantum-safe cryptographic security capability.
The AI on-chip inferencing, which is available at no extra cost, is “a game changer”, IBM executives said. It can deliver up to 300 billion deep learning inference operations per day with 1ms response time. IBM executives also said that the IBM z16’s accelerated on-chip AI “effectively eliminates” latency in inferencing. The result: businesses can cut through the data deluge and predict and automate for “increased decision velocity.” It enables even “non data scientist” customers and users to analyze data and derive insights at heretofore unprecedented speeds. Additionally, leveraging AI in routine daily operational processes can proactively assist businesses to take preventive actions, like identifying and stopping outages before they occur.
AI on-chip inferencing can assist customers in preventing fraud before it happens by scoring up to 100% of transactions in real-time without impacting Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and helps companies keep up to date on fast-changing regulatory issues. The AI on-chip inferencing can also assist companies with compliance; automating the process to allow firms to cut audit preparation time from one month to one week to maintain compliance and avoid fines and penalties.
On the security front, the IBM z16 takes the pervasive encryption introduced in the z14 model and z15 System Recovery Boost and turbo charges it with quantum-safe cryptographic security. The z14 pervasive encryption model provided security at every layer of the stack. The z15 System Recovery Boost capability allowed businesses to drastically reduce the time it takes to shutdown, restart and process the backlog that occurred during a system outage.
Quantum-safe cryptography is as close to unbreakable or impenetrable encryption as a system can get. It uses quantum mechanics to secure and transmit data in a way that cannot be hacked (at least not yet).
The IBM z16 is the preeminent mainstream server platform for digital enterprises requiring nothing less than seven nines – 99.99999% — best-in-class fault tolerant reliability; quantum cryptographic security and AI on-chip acceleration across multi platforms from datacenters to hybrid clouds and the network edge while delivering the lowest TCO and immediate ROI.