alt Hacker News> dual‑architecture hardware that helps enterprises run future AI and data intensive workloads with greater flexibility, reliability, and security
I think we can ignore the "AI" word here as its presence is only because everything currently has to be AI.
So why would IBM add ARM?
> As enterprises scale AI and modernize their infrastructure, the breadth of the Arm software ecosystem is enabling these workloads to run across a broader range of environments
I think it has become too expensive for IBM to develop their own CPU architecture and that ARM64 is starting to catch up in performance for a much lower price.
So IBM wants to switch to ARM without making a too big fuzz about it.
Replies
Im thinking maybe as a compliment to x86 offerings and eventual displacement as a primary offering , i do not see them ditching POWER.
The architecture might be non-standard and not very widespread however for what it does and workloads that are suited to it. I dont think any ARM design comes close , maybe Fujitsu's A64FX.
> ARM64 is starting to catch up in performance for a much lower price
Why do you say "starting to"? arm64 has been competitive with ppc64le for a fairly long time at this point
IBM has two architectures which are de-facto only used by them, s390x and ppc64le. They have poured a lot of resources into having open source software support those targets, and this announcement might mean they find it easier/cheaper going forward to virtualize ARM instead and maybe even migrate slowly to ARM.
>So IBM wants to switch to ARM without making a too big fuzz about it.
That was my first thought too, but it does not make sense, because if IBM would sell ARM-based servers nobody would buy from them instead of using cheaper alternatives.
As revealed in another comment, at least for now their strategy is to provide some add-in cards for their mainframe systems, containing an ARM CPU which is used to execute VMs in which ARM-native programs are executed.
So this is like decades ago, when if you had an Apple computer with a 6502 CPU you could also buy a Z80 CPU card for it, so you could also run CP/M programs on your Apple computer, not only programs written for Apple and 6502.
Thus with this ARM accelerator, you will be able to run on IBM mainframes, in VMs, also Linux-on-ARM instances or Windows-on-ARM instances. Presumably they have customers who desire this.
I assume that the IBM marketing arguments for this are that this not only saves the cost of an additional ARM-based server, but it also provides the reliability guarantees of IBM mainframes for the ARM-based applications.
Taking into account that today buying an extra server with its own memory may cost a few times more than last summer, an add-in CPU card that shares memory with your existing mainframe might be extra enticing.