Big Blue is betting that big iron for AI is a worthwhile investment for enterprise CIOs. With so much critical data still running through these legacy systems, IT leaders with hopes for AI might just agree.
CIOs have been moving workloads from legacy platforms to the cloud for more than a decade but the rush to AI may breathe new life into an old enterprise friend: the mainframe.
At least IBM believes so. Rather than pull away from big iron in the AI era, Big Blue is leaning into it, with plans in 2025 to release its next-generation Z mainframe, with a Telum II processor and Spyre AI Accelerator Card, positioned to run large language models (LLMs) and machine learning models for fraud detection and other use cases.
IBM's current z16 mainframe has baseline AI infusion for machine learning models. In the next iteration, IBM will be integrating AI into the core mainframe stack layer and AI acceleration at the processor level.