IBM announces chip that natively executes Arm and Z instructions concurrently
Cunning plan to expand the amount of software that runs on mainframes is also an admission ISVs are focusing their energies elsewhere
IBM is developing a cutting-edge chip that can concurrently execute instructions for its mainframe chips, the Arm architecture, and the LinuxONE architecture. The unnamed chip will be built using a two-nanometer technology node and will boast 11 high-performance cores running at over 5.7 GHz. Additionally, the chip will feature AI inference accelerators for transaction fraud detection, a dedicated on-chip data processing unit for I/O acceleration, and a large cache architecture to handle demanding enterprise workloads.
Each processor core on the chip will have the capability to natively execute Arm and IBM Z instructions, as well as Arm and LinuxONE instructions, simultaneously.
According to IBM's Vice President for the zSystems Ecosystem, Meredith Stowell, the Arm ecosystem is vast, encompassing more than 22 million developers worldwide and supporting a rapidly growing portfolio of cloud-native, AI, analytics, infrastructure, and enterprise applications. While IBM's Z platform is powerful and well-suited for demanding applications, the mainframe market is relatively small, with only 42 users in Australia, according to Rocket Software, a vendor that provides mainframe modernization tools.
As major hyperscalers have introduced their own Arm processors and customers are flocking to them, IBM recognizes the need to expand its software choice for existing IBM customers and attract more mainframe-curious users. The new chip represents a significant step towards ending IBM Z's historical isolation from the broader computing mainstream, while maintaining the core strengths of reliability, security, and virtualization that have made the platform a gold standard for mission-critical operations. IBM plans to release the new chip in 2028, likely for use in their upcoming z18 mainframe models.
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- IBM announces chip that natively executes Arm and Z instructions concurrently theregister.com
