IBM z16 With Integrated On-Chip AI Accelerator Unveiled

IBM has released the IBM z16, its next-generation system with an integrated on-chip AI accelerator that delivers latency-optimized inferencing. This new system enables real-time transaction analysis, including workloads such as credit cards, healthcare, and financial transactions. Building on IBM’s security leadership, the IBM z16 is specifically designed to help protect against near-future threats used to crack today’s encryption technologies.

IBM has released the IBM z16, its next-generation system with an integrated on-chip AI accelerator that delivers latency-optimized inferencing. This new system enables real-time transaction analysis, including workloads such as credit cards, healthcare, and financial transactions. Building on IBM’s security leadership, the IBM z16 is specifically designed to help protect against near-future threats used to crack today’s encryption technologies.

IBM z16

Leveraging the IBM Telum Processor, the IBM z16 brings together AI inferencing and secured high-volume transaction processing. Banks can analyze for fraud during transactions at scale and with low latency. For consumers, this could mean reducing the time and energy required to handle fraudulent transactions on their credit cards. For both merchants and card issuers, this could mean a reduction in revenue loss as consumers could avoid the frustration associated with false declines where they might turn to other cards for future transactions.

IBM z16 – Quantum-Safe

It is critical to protect against threats and data theft in hybrid cloud environments. Leveraging IBM technologies like Pervasive Encryption and Confidential Computing, IBM z16 protects data against future threats that could evolve with advances in quantum computing.

When configured with the Crypto Express 8S (CCEX8S) hardware security module, the IBM z16 is considered a quantum-safe system. The system is underpinned by lattice-based cryptography, an approach for constructing security primitives that protects data and systems against current and future threats. With IBM z16 quantum-safe cryptography, businesses can future-ready their applications and data today.

Along with secure boot (meaning that bad actors cannot inject malware into the boot process to take over the system during startup), IBM z16 clients can strengthen their cyber resiliency posture and retain control of their system. Also, the Crypto Express 8S (CEX8S) hardware security module will offer clients both classical and quantum-safe cryptographic technology to address use cases requiring information confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation.

IBM z16’s secure boot and quantum-safe cryptography can help clients manage future quantum-computing related threats, including harvest now, decrypt later attacks which can lead to extortion, loss of intellectual property, and disclosure of other sensitive data.

Modernizing The Hybrid Cloud

IBM has made significant investments by embracing open-source technology on the IBM zSystems platform and establishing a familiar developer experience across the hybrid cloud. These solutions are designed to help leverage customers’ investments in existing IT infrastructure, clouds, and applications while delivering the flexibility to run, build, manage and modernize cloud-native workloads on their choice of architecture.

Recent announcements as part of this effort include:

• IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack: to help clients increase agility and accelerate their transformation, including support for popular open-source projects
• IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Center: a digital front door to a vast array of tools, training, resources, ecosystem partners, and industry-specific expertise from IBM Consulting to help IBM zSystems clients accelerate the modernization of their applications, data, and processes in an open hybrid cloud architecture
• Tailored Fit Pricing: a full-stack approach to enable our clients to quickly respond to changes in dynamic workloads and needs of the business with cloud-like pricing
• Bringing Anaconda to Linux on Z: one example of bringing popular data science frameworks and libraries to these enterprise platforms, providing a consistent data science user experience across the hybrid cloud
• Streamlined Support: IBM Technology Support Services offers IBM z16 clients turnkey support to help predict and prevent unplanned disruption and technical services that accelerate how businesses take advantage of the opportunity hybrid technology environments present

With IBM z16, IBM used a highly collaborative, client-centered approach that included hundreds of individuals from more than 70 clients, a practice that is already underway for future IBM mainframe systems. IBM z16 will be generally available on May 31, 2022.

IBM has proven the mainframe is alive and well in the data center typically perceived as a space for racks of servers.

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