IBM has announced the latest version of its Linux-focused mainframe – the LinuxOne Emperor 4 as the company leads with promises of reduced energy consumption and increased sustainability.
While the z16 mainframe, which was announced by the company in April 2022, is optimized for IBM’s z/OS operating system, the LinuxOne Emperor 4 is designed to support Linux operating systems in a bid to obtain a significant portion of the Linux market.
Big Blue’s latest mainframe supports 32 Telum processors and can provide up to 40TB of RAIM. The Emperor 4 also provides “seven nines” of availability, which should translate to three seconds of downtime per year.
IBM LinuxOne Emperor 4
Mainframes for Linux distros are increasingly popular among financial services organizations, with Citibank being a user of IBM’s LinuxOne mainframes, combined with the MongoDB database.
With its latest iteration, it’s clear that IBM’s focus is on increasing environmental pressures. In a release (opens in new tab), it claims that the Emperor 4 “can reduce energy consumption by 75%, space by 50%, and the CO2e footprint by over 850 metric tons annually.”
This expression of commitment towards creating more sustainable products goes hand-in-hand with IBM’s own research which suggests that around half of the CEOs that took part saw sustainability as their highest priority, and indeed one of their greatest challenges.
The integration of artificial intelligence inference should also serve to improve latency.
Availability for the IBM LinuxOne Emperor 4 is scheduled for September 14, 2022, with entry- and mid-range models set to follow in the first half of 2023.
Via VentureBeat (opens in new tab)
