IBM Unveils Chip to Bring Mainframe Code to Arm Ecosystem

IBM is working on a new chip that will execute instructions for its own mainframe chips and Arm architecture concurrently. The unnamed chip, set to arrive in 2028, will be built on a two-nanometer technology node with 11 high-performance cores operating at over 5.7 GHz.

The chip's processor cores will also be able to natively execute instructions for the LinuxONE architecture. Big Blue promises that each core can run both Arm and IBM Z, or Arm and LinuxONE, instructions simultaneously.

According to IBM's Vice President for the zSystems Ecosystem Meredith Stowell, the company is trying to expand the amount of software that runs on mainframes by embracing the broader computing mainstream. The Arm ecosystem includes over 22 million developers worldwide and supports a growing portfolio of cloud-native applications.