bonziniIBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm
> 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.
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.
Marketingwise I think it is difficult for IBM to sell x86 systems as it is too easy for customers to compare performance to a standard Wintel server.
Sun had the same problem after 2001 dotcom when standard PC servers became reliable enough to run web servers on.
It's easier to sell "our special sauce" when building using a custom ARM platform. Then you have no easy comparison with standard servers.
Yep i think thats why even POWER isnt sold standalone but as part of the Z/i series packages as a unit.
They will probably market the ARM inclusion similarly - as something that the package provides.
As far as POWER i think only Raptor[1] does direct marketingof the power(hehe) and capabilities
POWER is sold standalone, it's not packaged with Z.
https://www.ibm.com/products/power
The i systems are just POWER machines with different firmware.
