EXCLUSIVE – INSIDE IBM’S TOP SECRET R&D LAB!!

IBM flew me out to their R&D lab in Germany to give you an exclusive look inside! That includes a look at their brand new server – the LinuxONE Emperor 4, built on their Telum CPUs.

I had the chance to visit one of their chip testing labs, where I got to hold a complete Telum wafer! They showed us around the lab, including their testing jigs that connect the 20,000 pins in them to the microscopic solder balls on the silicon dies. Their testing heads were incredible too, doing automatic alignment and endless amounts of testing of every single circuit on the chip.

They also showed us their socketed testing platform, where they use a special heating AND cooling head to be able to test the chips at a wide range of temperatures to help characterise it and push it to it’s limits.

We then moved to their datacentre test floor where they showed us their new LinuxONE Emperor 4 server. This is based on the same architecture as their Z16 platform, but of course running Linux instead and with a slightly different set of I/O options to suit various applications.

IBM say they’ve worked hard to maintain the Linux kernel support for their chips, alongside work on compilers like GCC and even end user programs like database engines. That means all you need to do is recompile your apps and they’ll work on the LinuxONE platform – you don’t need to re-write your entire codebase just to get things working.

On top of that, they say that compared to 2,000 x86 cores, 200 of their Telum cores can match or even outperform them, all while reducing power consumption by up to 75%, and datacentre floor space by 50%. That’s an impressive feat!

You can find out more about their labs and the LinuxONE system by watching the video!