Tie-up aims to widen Big Blue’s access to power-efficient compute
IBM and Arm are working together on getting software developed for Arm chips to run on Big Blue's enterprise systems, with an eye on future AI and data-intensive workloads.
Big Blue hailed this latest arrangement as a strategic collaboration with Arm to develop new dual‑architecture hardware. The goal is to combine the reliability, security, and scalability of IBM's enterprise systems with Arm's expertise in power‑efficient compute and broad software ecosystem, it said.
The partnership will focus on three key areas, with the first being to use virtualization to allow Arm-based software environments to operate within Big Blue's enterprise computing platforms, such as the IBM Z and LinuxONE mainframe kit.
The second area covers the performance and efficiency demands of modern workloads, including AI and data intensive applications. IBM says that this will cover getting enterprise systems to recognize and execute Arm applications, with the goal of having Arm-based environments better fit with the enterprise-grade reliability and security requirements.
The third area is long-term ecosystem growth. IBM talks of creating shared technology layers between platforms, allowing greater flexibility in how applications are deployed and managed. The aim is for enterprises to be able to adopt new applications and architectures while continuing to get the most out of their existing investments.
That last bit is, we suspect, code for enabling Big Blue's enterprise customers to take advantage of the latest AI tools and applications and integrate these with their big iron systems that handle their mission-critical workloads.
IBM Z and LinuxONE chief product officer Tina Tarquinio stated that this initiative is a natural extension of the firm's hardware and systems strategy.
"It continues IBM's pattern of anticipating enterprise needs well ahead of market inflection points and developing capabilities early so clients are prepared as new workloads and business models emerge," she claimed. "Our aim is to expand software choice and improve system performance while maintaining the reliability and security our clients expect."
We asked IBM to clarify what the collaboration was working towards, and a spokesperson helpfully told us: "While it's early days to share specifics, our intent is that the same features and qualities such as security, performance, resilience and cost-effectiveness that distinguish IBM Z and LinuxONE will be available to Arm64 workloads." We guess this means they haven't entirely figured out what they want to do themselves just yet.
Arm was equally shy of explaining anything beyond the bare details already given.
In a canned statement, Arm's EVP of Cloud AI Mohamed Awad said: "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," adding that the collaboration with IBM builds on this progress, extending that ecosystem into mission-critical enterprise environments.
This news comes just over a week after Arm unveiled its own datacenter processor targeted at AI workloads, dubbed the AGI CPU. We asked IBM if this had any place in the collaboration between the two, but the spokesperson told us, "That's a separate offering we're not focused on at this time."
Moor Insights & Strategy Chief Analyst and CEO Patrick Moorhead told The Register that this is indeed all about getting Arm software running on Z and LinuxONE hardware. "If you look at the full stack of any system, there are layers from app to OS and everything in between. Arm in the hyperscalers is a real thing, and has everything from the OS to apps to support it. All of it apart from the OS could run on the mainframe."
"Then there's the size of the dev base. Arm is very large and growing in the datacenter, and while IBM has done a really good job cultivating their devs, the momentum and size of Arm is undeniable. Net-net, IBM mainframe customers will have a lot more software to run on their mainframes," he added.
IBM announced the z17 family, the latest in its mainframe portfolio, almost exactly a year ago. This introduced an improved Telum II processor and Spyre AI Accelerator card, one with improved AI inferencing for running fraud detection checks against transactions and the other supporting generative AI and LLMs.
We also asked IBM when customers could expect to see the first fruits of this partnership with Arm. Big Blue's spokesperson said it is too early to tell, and timing is dependent on many factors. ®