IBM Breaks Ground with Dual-ISA Core that Natively Executes ARM and z/Architecture Instructions

IBM has made a significant breakthrough in its mainframe technology by introducing a dual-ISA core that natively executes both ARM and z/Architecture instructions. This innovation is a result of a collaboration between IBM and Arm, announced in April. The new processor is designed to bring the software support available across the Arm ecosystem to IBM's mainframes.

The dual-ISA core allows for seamless execution of either z/Architecture or AArch64 instructions within nanoseconds, making it the first processor to treat both ISAs as 'first-class citizens.' This means that businesses can unify deployment and run different workloads on the same platform without relying on separate servers.

The new processor features 11 high-performance cores, built on a 2nm process, operating at a base frequency of 5.7 GHz. It also comes with 36 MB of private L2 cache, virtual L3 and L4 caches, an on-chip DPU, and hardware accelerators for AI, compression, and cryptography workloads.