I Tried to Break a Million Dollar Computer - IBM Z16 Facility Tour!
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
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IBM invited us to do a facility tour showing off the mainframes they sell to high frequency trading customers and the like. You want to see wacky, custom hardware? This is it!
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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:16 What's a Z16?
1:55 Cooling
3:00 Power
3:40 Compute
6:00 Nutty Socket
9:18 Crazy VRMs
11:24 RAM like you've never seen it before
12:50 Cache work weird
15:00 now THIS is networking!
19:30 Welcome to the Patch Room
21:15 "my wife unit"
21:42 What's this for?
22:15 Price $$
23:45 Outro - Наука та технологія
Linus: Tries to break super computer
Super computer: Breaks Linus’s voice
Now that he finally reached puberty the big boys invite him to their man cave.
@The Night Which is also a type of super computer.
@The Night bruh who cares. its just a dumb youtube comment made to joke about how loud the server room is.
@The Night bro, you're making yourself look silly, stop. Your comment is like someone getting upset that another person is calling a truck a vehicle. Literally the same thing, one is just more specific.
Believe me, I tried to roast a supercomputer with heavy compute (see videos on my channel), but the A100 GPUs just stay at like 53°C even under sustained 400W load. The engineering of the cooling is insane.
This is the type of enterprise content I want to see. Huge computers, weird architectures, and crazy custom solutions in the name of efficiency.
Word on the street is that the DoD is going to use exascale supercomputers with hardware like this (Probably Intel's Aurora & AMD's Frontier) to simulate nuclear missile failure scenarios in extreme detail to inform the appropriate upgrades and maintenance efforts.
I doubt Russia has nothing like this to work on their nukes. China's maybe, but they're probably still playing catch-up. Japan is certainly not going to lend Fugaku to either of them.
so last week Roman der8auer has been in a huge data center showing every little detail, including an IBM Z mainframe and even taking things apart. The very thing Linus claimed two weeks ago in a WAN show to be impossible.
Nearby: Their data center was much much cleaner and better organized than this mess.
@@jonathand827 watch it on his English channel. Would make for a nice series on LTT. main thing is LS claiming being impossible to get in.
It's still very much alive and kicking. The company I work for still has Big Iron.
@@RandomUser2401 It's a hardware lab for testing configurations. It's not going to be a production level facility. Also, side note, more production level facilities are rats nests than you might want to imagine.
I have come full circle.
Watching Linus in 2014 made me want to study computer engineering, I got a job at IBM, and now Linus is reviewing an IBM mainframe. Hopefully LTT can continue to inspire generations of engineers for years to come!
hell yeah boy it will
How does it feel knowing you work for the company that knowingly provided the machines that catalogued the holocaust? Genuinely curios
hell yeah brother
Worked on IBM mainframes for 25 years, starting in 1980. Started as COBOL programmer, ended as systems programmer (sysadmin in unix terms). My last 16 working years were on AIX/Linux due to architecture switches in the IT departments I was working. I was never able to fully explain the awsomeness of IBM mainframes to my new colleagues. I think Linus succeeded.....
It's hard to explain, and even harder to IT engineers who think distributed systems are the shit and think of mainframes as something outdated. Then you show them how many transactions an international bank or airline might have and ask how much would that cost to implement in the kind of systems they know and make them realize why mainframes still exist.
Apart of all the bells and whistles of the Z series, the thing is once you are past a certain point of transactions it becomes cheaper to have a mainframe. People really don't know how monstrous is the transaction volume capacity of these machines and how many servers of other type of systems would you need to match it.
You may tell them the biggest z15 can create more than 6800 virtual machines or virtual servers for production environment. Some banks in Brazil even used the z mainframe to create more than 10 thousand virtual web servers at peak moment, one for each client to access their account online.
NOT REALLY AWSOME JUST OVER PRICED!!!!!
I’m cabling one right now. Please pray for me 😅.
Is mainframe good for career now ?
I love how everything is redundant, they probably had a 2nd youtuber on site just in case Linus failed.
lol
Wtf
Ahh, that's why they sent out der8auer first then.
@@drpsyko101 rumors say, he is still in the waiting room.
probably MKBHD
Can we all take a second to applaud the audio team on this video? The background is clearly, very noisy, and the LMG team did an excellent job (probably in post) getting Linus' voice to carry and suppressing the background noise. Can't imagine that was easy
As a video editor myself I can only second this!
I wonder if they ran it through RTX voice somehow lol
@@Rickles rtx voice isn't all that tbh
With the only problem being Linus croaky voice, not his fault as voices and throats get tired.
adobe suite allows you to isolate background noise and eliminate it very efficiantly. Its an extra step but not a big one.
Literally geeking! I work for IBM Research on chip integration and this video played in a meeting today. I was like no way they got Linus! Awesome exposure!
I gotta say, amazing work you guys do. I hope you guys are proud of what you create! :)
Hopefully more people know about this!
Linus: "Can I hold one?"
IBM Tech: "Uhh yeah, I don't see why not?"
Audience: *gasp* "Have you never watched..."
𝓜𝓮: "𝓓𝓻𝓸𝓹 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓣𝓮𝓵𝓾𝓶... 𝓓𝓻𝓸𝓹 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓣𝓮𝓵𝓾𝓶... 𝓓𝓻𝓸𝓹 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓣𝓮𝓵𝓾𝓶"
The fact that serious big tech companies will let Linus refer their tech as "doohickey majigs that lines up with the dots on the thing", is something that will always make me laugh.
IBM PR Employee: "...and then we'll just have Linus come in and introduce it, talk smack about it and drop it."
IBM PR Manager: "Oh yeah - He's that UA-cam kid with a beard. Seems legit."
you see that cable stack? probably asked him to cable manage it. :P
The alternative is learning 10,000 acronyms and product code names, you'd be amazed how often we basically call things 'doohicky majigs'
IT is full of nerds
A lot of this video, eg. 5:00 , looks like Linus virtually reading off IBM PR copy.
I'm reminded of a Veritassium episode about self-driving cars, except that Derek stated quite bluntly that the video was sponsored by the very car company whose vehicles he was demo-ing. It didn't save him from a lot of well-earned flak that he openly divulged the matter. He still looked like a flack .
The fact that the screwdriver at 14:50 kept moving after he stopped it really shows how good he is at what he's known for.
@14:57 but did it fall?!
@@bigp3t3_cpt we need to know
I lost my mind
@@bigp3t3_cpt its like the top in inception ............
@@bigp3t3_cpt It did I think, that's why the cut and weird transition lol
The fact that you're in there hands-on is amazing. All of this would usually be some controlled PR commercial, but here you are hanging with the actual tech guys and FILMING the whole thing in there.
Props to the whole crew, editors and all.Also the transitions *chef's kiss*
This was one of the best LTT videos in a while (and that’s saying something). Working for a large international financial corporation in IT I have passing knowledge of our z system mainframe systems and z/Linux systems. We push our backups a lot further than 100km though. It’s really awesome to see this new hardware that will be the future of my industry.
Shout-out to the audio engineers on this video. I wouldn't imagine a server testing facility with Linus having to nearly scream is an ideal environment for quality sound 😂
Yet, I remember having seen demos of an (I think) nvidia branded AI software to clean up audio from background noise, and it was amazing. They should have used it in this video!
@@coski87 I think you need to at least keep a bit of the noise in, would feel weird otherwise
you can hear the background noise reduction working so hard his voice turns a little robot-y at times
Yeah, pretty sure part of my tinnitus is from working in a noisy IT environment for a fair number of years. Of all things Data Center are, quiet isn't it. And if it becomes quite, prepare to shit your pants because something just crapped out.
@@jackielinde7568 ahh I dunno I never found them that loud... Though my old job did refer me to a hearing place after doing their yearly hearing tests... Eh I'm sure there's no connection there I left before seeing a specialist anyhoo
Last unboxing: this million dollar server is probably the most expensive thing we will see, lets not break it
This vid: lets break this different million dollar server!
Playing with someone else's million dollars is easier
@@mortiphago The Petabyte SSD project is someone elses server too
Next vid: Lets try to fix a million dollar server!
This isn’t a server though. Mainframe supercomputers are far from being a server.
@@bene5431 Sure but... The one at IBM falls under their insurance. The one at LMG might actually cost him.
This level of advanced technology is so cool to get to see, just quietly being the literal backbone of our modern society
IBM is'nt a joke when it comes to top end enterprise.
The director of Deloitte's Mainframe and Cloud modernization department in Brussels once showed me how to administer a zOS with Python. Frankly I was surprised. Any UNIX/LINUX admin would be able to do it. The power of the mainframe and the tools of the modern developer. Major strong combination.
I spent the last few years working on the Telum chip design and it's so fucking cool to see Linus nerd out over our system! Thank you for coming Linus, cheers! :)
Are you one of the creators...
That's very cool...
Great job bro...
you worked in engineering these cpus, awesome job man
@@thunderxr2736 why do you type ellipses after every sentence...
@@acetyl3977 I think he doesn’t believe milesforwin
@@acetyl3977 the thing is that u just wasted time asking a stupid question to a stranger online.
While you could of congratulated this person for his hard work and for improving our technology.
Use your time to do better stuff, and make every second of your life as it is your last...
Linus is really getting into server PCs, not to mention that it’s been a while since he last traveled for LTT. Not that I’m complaining, good content is good content.
Getting back into them**
He took a break from all this stuff when his audience started attracting more and more new faces to make his content more accessible
I am fucking loving it! The stuff we never usually get to see that's so interesting and powerful! I hope he keeps up this streak honestly
@@LeonisYT accessible? To who?
no traveling, gee, i wonder why that could be
I enjoy it because I know very little about high-level server tech, and it's super interesting to learn about. I'll always enjoy the gaming PC videos, but I've pretty much maxed that skill tee. There's basically only new ground to cover when new hardware releases. And even that's overstating it sometimes.
I honestly hope this video does well, because I found this extremely interesting. Hearing how custom hardware is changed to solve specific problems. It's fascinating and I would love to see more content like this.
14:54 This cut feels like a cliffhanger... did the screwdriver end up rolling into the server post-cut? 😅
i was freaking out about that too.
Yeah I thought he was beyooond that
You can tell how loud that data centre was, Linus is practically hoarse at the end of the video. While some of this went a bit over my end, it's really impressive what they accomplished. Love videos like this
Employees have to wear ear protection when they go in!
@@melissachodz I'm not surprised honestly but that's pretty wild lol 🤣
I was thinking about that. I noticed it and I was thinking "wow, I'd rather just stop talking if it felt like that"
I often work in a smaller but similar environment, and I choose to wear earplugs + earmuffs, and the air conditioning noise still goes through pretty well.
I have been on an IBM raised floor before. Was something like 80 decibels. It's loud enough to cause hearing damage if you stay long enough, but not immediately.
Linus thinks they're letting him mess around for a video, little did he know, this was an essential part of server validation
Imagine that on an IBM spec sheet "Survived a Linus"
@@L70ECT lol 😂
@@L70ECT Hahahaha!
I can't stop laughing 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Linus resistance ✓
Thanks IBM for letting Linus and team in, that was a fascinating look behind the scenes.
I've been in quite a few server rooms and many more networking ones but nothing this cutting edge. It was also great to see that the IBM guys present were quite aware of who Linus is and were happy to joke around with him, I suspect there was a lot more "on the cutting room floor".
Just wanted to note that when you talked about I/O cards, you mentioned CICSPLEX, it is actually SYSPLEX which represents a complex of z/OS systems. :) CICS is a transaction manager that runs on z/OS and CICS has support for what is call CICSPLEX, which is for CICS running cohesively in a SYSPLEX. There's text on the screen just before and at 18:58 in the vid.
I was just coming here to say the same thing (albeit a year later)
Big ups to the sound team here. Linus sounds like he's screaming directly into a giant fan, but to be fair that's more or less what's happening lol
Yeah his voice starts to crack at the end of the video RIP
Datacenter voice. Shouting too loud in bone dry air.
@@TheSeriph not bone dry, actually. too dry creates static. you need a certain balance.
The camera team, though... Was this filmed in 12 FPS? Maybe something is going wrong on my end, but it's SO choppy!
*Overly Excited Nerd Voice
14:56 I love how the transition is being made while a wild screwdriver is going to fall into the computer
he probably went to the beyond cuz someone at IBM killed him after letting it roll in and damage the system lol
@@GenUltra758 Replaced him with a AI deepfake processed using the Z16
@@DuyNguyen-yx2vd Using their all-new AI hardware acceleration!
@@DuyNguyen-yx2vd exactly XD
This is quite the amazing video. The difference between cutting edge enterprise and consumer is insane.
Imagine the software/monitoring side though, in order to manage all the redundancy.
The redundancy/management side is not really all that complicated to the user. If something goes wrong, these systems can text you. If something REALLY BAD happens, a mainframe can call IBM instead (or whomever you have your service contract with). Then before you know something's wrong, the guy shows up at your data center with tools and spare parts in hand. A lot of these z/16 parts and components can be hot-swapped, so you don't always have to take down the whole machine (the whole machine being however many racks PLUS whatever racks you have dedicated to storage).
@@justaskin8523 Man this brings memories in 2007 I was in a project in a huge Brazilian company, then from nowhere a wild Sun Microsystems Technician appears.
One of the servers there called Sun because of a fault module.
Linus: "Very few outsiders have ever been invited to IBM"
Also Linus: *Tries to break it*
as a IBM technician, glad to see Linus finally tackling enterprise servers
@SomeoneOnlyWeKnow they've transitioned mainly to focus on enterprise companies. Think big banks like J.P Morgan, CityBank, Chase, Deutsche Bank. Also think huge manufacturers like BOSCH, VW Group, John Deere, etc. Those are the customers that IBM have
I am wondering what kind of things Linus could sign under the NDA contract. Even if that video was extra educational, I do not think that he touched the company know-how there which is even more interesting
@@snap3852 As an .. ex-IBM sysadmin (Now Kyndryl), currently supporting some of the customers you mentioned, I'm glad to see this video as well. Very informative and great for public awareness that such things even exist
Ayy, another IBMer here. I wont say what I do so I don't dox myself. Building 45 though.
Listen I don't know what your service is like but I crashed a IBM Christmas party one year and it was pretty good so props for that.
Can we all just appreciate the audio engineers that make Linus sound as good as he does? You can tell that he is straining his voice to talk over the ambient noise, but you can clearly make out the strain but not the reason for it. That's impressive to me.
with such a wideband sound too almost white noise with extra frquencies for every size of fan, only a tiny bit of artefacting in the end result. outstanding work.
Rtx voice?? 🤔
To be fair, recently it has become super easy to filter out noise (thanks AI). As someone else mentioned, RTX Voice is good (but screws with the audio quality), but there apps out there like Audition that are incredibly good at distinguishing human voice from ambient noise. I've done it myself for recordings in very loud environment, I managed to get better results than you can hear in this video. Granted, that software isn't cheap. There are also microphones designed specifically for loud environments.
izotope rx 9 was probably used
Thought this was granny Kitboga's cameo :)
I've seen some of this stuff in person. One thing I found truly interesting was they had a beast of a machine and across the aisle there were just racks for storage for that machine. Those racks of storage present themselves as tape drives to the OS because that's still what it expects. The amount of legacy work going on with these machines is unreal. My university had a mainframe class that was mostly teaching COBOL. The university would get requests quite often looking for people to work on their mainframes. All the older COBOL programmers are leaving or have left and it's difficult for these companies to find people that program on these things now.
I'm an old MVS operator from back in the day (started in '83)! An Amdahl 580 if I recall correctly....anyway it's amazing to see the progress they have made in mainframe hardware in 40+ years!
This video brought back some good memories! Good job!
The content LTT have been putting out recently in the server / enterprise space really makes you appreciate how vast Linus' knowledge is.
So much of this goes over my head, but all this content is truly fascinating. I can't wait to see more :)
It's not all Linus's knowledge. He has a really good team behind him, and understands enough about technology that he doesn't blank face when they tell him things. Props to the whole team at LMG.
@@chloedevereaux1801 just cause one guy knows more doesn't devalue other knowledgeable people.
Linus knows so much about servers that he lost a bunch of data because he doesn't know about servers... I'm not knocking Linus, to be clear, I'm just stating a fact, and although level1techs is helping them try to recover that data, it's still not known how much data they will have lost by the time the recovery process is done... I guess what I'm saying is, yes they know the basics, but anything more than that, is out of their league, and they usually either have help with, or else, do a lot of research on before they do a video on it...
@@northwiebesick7136 honestly, all you mentioned irs good content, he fails for us to learn or to be entertained
@@SuperShadowmetal not saying it isn't, I'm just saying that those saying that Linus is a god that knows absolutely everything, are generally wrong...
Linus:Wait you handed me 2 different working chips…
IBM worker: Yeap…
Linus: well… that was your first mistake…
Even Linus knows himself too well… 😂😂😂
IBM be like: Crap, which Intern set this meeting up
This gives me the same awed feeling as when I visited my dad (a dpm / systems analysist) at his work (an insurer of extremely big things) and got to meet his mainframe for a school project. It was all IBM blue cases with tape backups and looked nothing like this.
I watched this video when it first came out and I'm watching it again now that I'm in the middle of configuring almost a dozen new z16's for my job. I love the mainframe representation, they're such a weird different type of computing.
The redundancy is actually even crazier than it seems from the video! in the event that a datacenter completely goes offline, offsite backup machines just take over the workload, usually without even any notice from customers. this is tested quite regularly. I would also point out that on top of AI and automation, there are operators 24/7/365 remotely monitoring critical applications and data, ensuring availability.
BC/DR! As important as they are, always hated the tests :D Yes, the video is missing a lot of info on GDPS and so on, pitty, but as a pure HW level video, great content
that part with operators depends on site, it can be automated to a point when you don't have regular 24/7 operation support, but only office hours and on-calls... and when there's critical error, machine calls operator and wakes him up (or even technician directly)
(also it isn't hw-call, that's a different thing :D because naming schemes make sense...)
@ yeah, but enterprise datacenters will have operators monitoring 24/7/365. Your regular webhost datacenter might not have that, but trust me in the enterprise space with multi billion dollar datacenters, you bet they have live monitoring operators. (Edit: had to change trillion into billion due to language conversion error).
@@sloppyprogrammer4373 these are software operators, usually in a different city or a country than where is datacenter
And the datacenter will have operators to manage some stuff, but they don't usually touch mainframes, if it needs someone out of office hours, it's never operator, those guys are in datacenter for x86 systems :p
And I'm talking about big clients, like fortune 500 level big
@ IBM technicians are typically capable of handling their own stuff in their own facilities. If one of these is in a 3rd party facility you are correct in that the operators typically arent going to be touching the mainframes themselves and are there to facilitate access, and monitor the DC infrastructure not the server level stuff. I.e they are there for facility power, cooling and fire emergencies and the vendors hired or on call from the customer will be the ones dispatched to do the work.
IBMs own facilities their guys are more than capable on average, to do a lot of the hardware related stuff. Obviously software is dependent on the customer and depending on compliance regulations for the customer, who is allowed, is different than who can fix something. (I do not work for IBM however i am an operator at a DC for a 3rd party Data Center and have worked in the industry for almost a decade now)
NOC Operators for the customers can be in house as well, depending on the needs of the customer. A unit like that can also be rented out on a virtual level as well and managed by someone like IBM or AWS and a huge portion of the software work can be done by in house operators as well. It is very fluid and depends on the needs of the customer.
IBM's team were being so cool with all of this, that's absolutely awesome! You can see that Linus is quite a lot more comfortable and chill at IBM. They just seem like cool nerds.
This video is so fascinating. That is some enterprise AF stuff.
At last you know it’s a good crash test :)
Only after Linus was made to sing the "IBM Happy men smiling all the way, in its service to mankind that's why we are so gay" company song.
Thanks... this is more information about our own Z16 than I'll receive from my supposed education department. Been working on Z and it's predecessors since 1982.
Is mainframe good for career mow ?
As an IBM technician that recently went to a training course for working on Z systems, I’d say that this should be part of the course! What an great breakdown of these resilient and powerhouse systems. You really can throw everything and the kitchen sink at these and they will still power through.
It’s also great to see IBM getting coverage like this. I hope to see more content like this but I may be a little biased!
Linus screamed so much that his voice was hoarse: "DATA CENTER THINGS!!"
The fact hes not wearing ear plugs is kinda a workplace health and safety thing, im suprised IBM didnt insist he did.
I’ve come across some really early 70’s IBM hardware when l was in IT, and yet “how IBM do things” is still very recognisable here. Everything is custom engineered, all of it is redundant and error corrected, all of it is modular. It is just capable of achieving massive uptime for years and years. This video showcase was a big PR win for the brand 😎
Here I come with my 40 gbps Cat 8 cabling being destroyed.
hi
vi.
vi
The granddaddy of computing.
Love this video. Things have changed so much over the years. The awesomeness of the mainframe still stands strong!
Great review! I worked at IBM as a mainframe analyst for years and would have killed for a tour like this!
Is mainframe good for career now ?
11:50 strangest thing about that RAM is the '"assembled in the usa" sticker, so unusual to see computer components actually made domestically. You know that's custom as hell.
Probs due to the hw being used for highly sensitive data
Assembled != made
The DDR 4 chips are made by SK Hynix which is a korean brand.
Parts are international
Parts are Korean, it’s just assembled in us
This video was great! Huge props to IBM for giving Linus access to all of this and really embracing his hands-on style. I know Linus was talking recently in a WAN show about how he's had some people invite him to make a video without giving him full access and this is a perfect example of why he needs that access. How many people watching this video are actually super passionate or knowledgeable about IBM mainframes? Probably not that many and yet tons of people watched anyways with interest.
I hope we see more videos like this!
Yeah, really excited for the eventual Intel ones
not just that, he really explained it well to us, it is like my professor teaching something that I've never heard before
I work with these machines but I've never seen one in person. This video is way better than any educational material that IBM has on the topic, even though it doesn't go to as much detail. I'm very happy that IBM agreed with this, heck they had to reach out to LTT because today is the release day of this new model, it had to be filmed before that. Most IT specialists not knowing that mainframes exist, this video is doing wonders for the awareness and I love it!
I am super passionate and knowledgeable about mainframes... well so so knowledgeable lol
But the HUGE problem in the industry is that people don't know anything about them... so the entire aging workforce has no trainable replacements. It's going to be a HUGE problem in the next decade.
@@lukino805 I learned more from this video about the system hardware than I have in any manual I ever read on them.
Funny thing is this sounds like an Ad but its just a very enthusiastic Linus talking about something he loves
My dad works in IBM and works on the mainframe of the computer. He used to design some of the chips but now he is on the pcie testing team. He has been on the testing floor many times. When he was on the testing floor, him and his team drop sometime drop parts worth 10,000 or more parts dollars but they are durable so they usually don’t break
This was so great! IBM is a giant in the industry that gets little coverage due to focusing on exclusively large enterprise customers. Their products are the backbone of a lot of our modern interconnected society though and I’m glad to see some acknowledgment for their interesting work.
m8, even for people 'in the industry' (sysadm but for a completely different use case and machines) - 7 9s is a joke, absurd stuff, impressive beyond all reason, if one of my clients requested it I'd laugh at them
The whole Bill Gates controversy was crazy. F*ck Microsoft.
As a mainframe sysprog, this video is a great way for new people to get into the mainframe space. Good job Linus!
How do you even begin working with this stuff? I'm actually curious. I love tech and am a pretty good programmer by now, and am looking to test the limits of technology. Working on these kind of machines seems to be on that edge
As an ex mainframe sysadmin (z/OS z/Linux) this video gives me PTSD flash backs. never again
My son's in middle school, and his hobby is hacking OS360 in Hercules. He's going to confuse his CS teachers some day :)
And the excursion into my world high speed fiberoptic networking is always welcome for a cable monkey like myself. It makes people so happy when they see people taking an interest in their more specialised area.
@@neonraytracer8846 Linus really sold the hardware here, working in Mainframe is not that glamorous
Enterprise level gear is something else. I started my sysadmin career as a Solaris admin working on high end Sun gear. This was about 20 years ago, and the tech back then for redundancy was crazy. Their sun cluster specs went so far as to request two different power feeds into the *building* from different suppliers. IIRC the 6800 had four 32A 240V inputs.
This video reminds me of the good old days when I worked for IBM, on their mainframes, including Z. Amazing content, thank you!
I work at this IBM plant, and I just missed seeing you, Linus! I'm a technician at this IBM plant, and I was running tests on a Z16 today.
linus: ..."Is it this one?
guy: "yep"
linus: "wait so you guys handed me a working chip before?"
guy:"yep"
linus: "Oh, well that's your first mistake."
made me happy. thanks :D
These are my favourite types of vids, great work all at LMG :)
I LOVE this stuff, seeing the pumps was so neat, it's just a completely different ball game from the benchmark drag races we're used to.
The amount of engineering they must put into designing those systems, with completely unique parts (unique down to the chips themselves, basically like they are building a system up from raw metals without any outside help), it's probably more R&D costs than a lot of pharmaceutical companies spend on new drugs. And for all that to end up still only running average $1m for a fully loaded and customized rack...that seems downright reasonable.
I think $1 million is only the base Z16 and doesnt include support
@@suntzu1409 And spare parts... :P
It helps when you have a complete monopoly on the mainframe market - as in; you know with supreme confidence, that if you build it - they will buy it (and will continue to for years to come) along with everything else that’s required to run it (eg. support contracts, etc)
IBM is pretty unique in this regard, but in a sense IBM is MOSTLY R&D. They are the company with one of the biggest number of patents registered (if not the one with the most of them all), and they can afford that because they work with pretty unique clients with pretty unique requirements. There is no pricetag on reliability, when finance and taxes go through the silicon.
Also IBM engineering has strong work ethic. They needed 3 years to make Linux run on Power arch. Their commits alone tell the story, how serious they are about their work.
That's just hardware. It does not include the license to use it and the support/maintenance contract. This is a multi-million dollar system to run every year...probably north of $16M a year.
Lol, I'm working for IBM and am selling and configuring these mainframes, however, I am finding out about z16s from an LTT video. We are still selling maintenance for Z14 and Z15 machines
I mean, Z16 was kinda expected, wasn't it (although IBMs numbering can be a bit weird)?
To be fair they were only announced officially today at the IBM event
how? there was public announcement already and everyone should have got email about special Z-day, did you put spam filter on company mail?
also that cpu was announced a looong time ago, even tho they didn't say it was for z16, everyone knew :D
@ I guess that corporate drones don't need to know what they are doing, we just do as we are told, Z13 - Z16, it's all the same to us in the econfig tool, just feature numbers to input into ISAT and quotes just pop up, moneyz for dayz
That was amazing to watch! Thanks LTT for doing this.
i recently built a liquid cooled unraid server using old parts i had on hand, and i used barbs with pex style squeeze clamps to secure all the zmt hoses. seeing the same type of hardware here makes me very happy in my choice
My grandfather was an IBM Mainframe technician for almost 3 decades until the early 90's when he retired. If he was still alive today this kind of crazy tech would blow his mind! He was doing IBM punch cards and woven copper memory cores!!!
"Please excuse my appearance Linus" How thoughtful of IBM to be self-conscious about cable management around him.
If they saw LMG's server room, they wouldn't be embarrassed.
Videos like this is the sole reason why I am subscribed to LTT..IT is always interesting to see how new technology are being implemented by businesses or organisations
I worked with IBM Power system for 5 years and saw a bunch of Z systems in banking datacenters, best show and explanation Linus!
This was such a massive PR/Marketing win for IBM, it was so interesting to get such access to their dev site, there must be a bunch of graduates in here thinking that they really want to work for IBM now, and anyone facing a complicated compute task in the future now has a brand name they can call. A good result for everyone I think 😺👍
Honestly I'd love to work for IBM, I've wanted to work for them for ages and I'm looking at trying to get an internship hopefully
@@acorgiwithacrown467 They are quite competitive internally I heard. At the only site I visited nobody had their own desk either, they just hot-desked with a laptop wherever there was a space. It would certainly look good on a CV though, good luck 🙂
Just lock right into IBM's proprietaryness, and have your skills be able to transfer nowhere else, LOL! Might as well learn RPG and COBOL while you're at it.
@@fitybux4664 That works both ways though, learn Cobol and you'd have a job forever, learn javascript and you'd be competing against the entire world
@@fitybux4664 If you can learn COBOL you can get quite literally the most stable programming job there is with like 99% of banks. There's a stupid amount of demand at the moment for capable COBOL programmers. Same goes for assembly as alot of banks core systems are entirely coded in assembly and since barely anyone learns assembly your basically set for the next 50 years with a high paying job.
Very cool video. Having worked for IBM more than 20 years, seeing this marketing makes for a very refreshing change. Good job Linus.
Kudos to the editing/audio department. Cleaning up Linus' mic while he's behind the cabinet must've been a nightmare!
Can't believe I missed this when it first went up! One of my internships while at uni was in the mainframe team of a bank and I truly got an appreciation of these magnificent systems designed for speed above all else! The team I was on even got to go on a data centre tour and we got to see the actual mainframe machine itself, looking very similar to that one on screen while I'm typing this comment (though this was a few [wait no the last few years have been an illusion it's been more than a few] years ago so an older model)
Mainframes have never really been about CPU horsepower, the true measure of a mainframe is how much IO it can handle.
Redundancy and uptime also
With that much PCIE in each box and the compute to back up some serious data handling I think these guys handle plenty of IO.
Linus: *Tries to break the super computer*
The super computer: *Pathetic.*
I tried to roast the Nvidia A100's in Europe's largest supercomputer (JSC). CFD sims make them run quite hot. Demos on my YT channel.
You exceeded all my expectations with this video Linus. amazing stuff!
Linus: >holding literally anything expensive<
Everyone: >staring at Linus handling expensive product in mild terror
The IBM guys have always seemed super chill from their media presence. A bunch of nerds doing cool shit. it would be great to see more of the enterprise side in LTT format.
You nailed it on both fronts.
I work with IBM Z-series mainframe computers and understood almost 30% of what Linus said! These machines rock.
I'm jealous! Does IBM operate in Sweden? Sounds like a dream job
@@theRPGmaster They do!
@@mahimahiman1 Mainly printers?
I used to work for IBM porting their legacy 360 mainframe programs to the zLinux systems. It’s crazy how long some of their mainframes have been running without failing.
Pretty cool and unexpected to see LTT literally in my neighborhood. I work at the Poughkeepsie site (remote since 2020, but office just opened if we want to go). I used to work on one of the raised floors there back in my server ops days. Those Z systems are beasts.
This is far more interesting than playing with a server. The engineering that goes into these systems makes a modern x86 1U server look like something from the 60s
@@Masp89 That's so cool to know.
I wouldn't go that far. Some of the most interesting aspects of these systems are at most a few years ahead of Intel/AMD. For example, when it comes to cache, AMD is looking to expand L3 by 3x via 3D V-cache, while Intel is using HBM as an L4. To get similar main memory capacities will probably require DDR5. Accelerators for storage, crypto, AI, etc. are generally off-CPU chips, and while there's some movement to do custom integrated chiplets, it's far from clear exactly what combinations will move enough volume to be worth it. But there's 0 chance that the AI accelerator on an IBM CPU handles nearly as much throughput as a proper GPU/TPU.
LMAO @@Masp89 Yes, but the z16 is far from what System360 was. What you mean is z/OS has roots to OS/360
They are great for heavy parallel computing but sucks for the general purpose stuff x86 is good at.
Transactions is usually where I have seen them used almost exclusively
@@GeekProdigyGuy It's about more than just cache or specs. The mainframe is fundamentally much faster at transaction processing than x86 because of architecture differences, which is the main goal since they're mostly used by banks and airlines.
We have an IBM i Series powering the heart of our bank. Still is configured via green screen terminal emulators, pretty wild! And I’m the poor bastard who has to keep it secure
I will pay good money for your terminals. And theyre not terminal emulators, terminal emulators would be your command prompt or whatever you use on your linux. What you have are bonafide terminals.
Ahh CLP programs. I remember doing lots of display programs using RPG 3/4 . Those were the days.
@@excitableboy7031 lol, no they emulate the terminals in order to run them on modern x86 PCs. Health industry is the same.
Green screen for life!
@@beltaxxe what kind of modern x86 PC would have have green screen CRTs?
This kind of enterprise grade hardware is absolutely insane! I love it!
Companies are getting off of mainframes the world over, but the mainframe platform has some of the highest redundancy and reliability in the industry. And the beauty of it is that as an end user, nobody really knows that they're using a mainframe. Booking a flight is probably still done on mainframes. Most banking transactions probably happen on mainframes. There's still an awful lot of manufacturing being done from shop floor to mainframes. Mainframes can do cloud just as well as Azure and AWS.
I think losing customers is really all IBM's fault because of the way that they license the OS, transaction processing software, database software, and hell, even the compilers can cost you money on a monthly basis. I think it might even be borderline gouging. If you hate subscriptions, a mainframe just may not be for you!
But in addition to the old mainframe programming languages such as Cobol, PL1, Fortran, and assembler, you can also write and run Java, C++, and other types of apps on a mainframe. And you can run Oracle on a mainframe. All it takes is for you to have more money than God, and with that you just might even be able to AFFORD running that stuff on a mainframe!
@@justaskin8523 , IBM had licensed their OS to others, as I knew Siemens and others, in 80's and 90's. When IBM updated their CPUs to 64-bit, most companies couldn't catch up with hugh investment. So these companies moved to RISC processor and UNIX/Solaris.
Having spent the first 2 years of my professional career supporting Mainframe from a L2/L3 tech perspective it still blows my mind how stupidly-powerful datacenter hardware is compared to consumer tech. Loved this video! More please!
Remember when people said "is it an IBM or an Apple?"
They have certainly shifted from owning the prebuilt PC world to crazy other things.
I mean they were doing this well before the concept of a PC existed. But yeah, they kinda gave up on consumer stuff a while ago so they could focus on enterprise clients. And later also dropped their x86 servers (by selling all of that to Lenovo), however they still do occasionally use x86 processors in storage systems. Most of their systems however are Power or Z. Mostly just x86 for the Spectrum Virtualize based storage appliances, and by extension the other stuff they happened to build on those platforms.
IBM started with and always sold mainframes. I was told a would have to move to Dallas if I wanted to program for them since they did not need many but their core staff. This was in the 1980's. They have always been THE mainframe company. PC's were just a side project which is why they were dropped.
ibm went 10000% stuffy uncool fogey governement/business tools
crapple went 10000% cool, hip, trendy consumer toys
ibm helps the world work and get stuff did and crapple just wants to vomit flashy ads and scam people
micropenis is hemmoraging money trying to rip off android as hard and fast as it can. android is staring directly into the sun wondering wether to put on screen on the BACK on your next phone or to finally make android tablet software not poopy. jokes on you its neither. theyre gonna put a screen inside the usb port.
IOS just discovered several android features that all immediately flopped hard in some rando sony xperia phone nobody bought from 2017 and is *REALLY STOKED* they came up with the idea first here in 2022 and really wanna tell you about it
meanwhile samsung is humming quiety to itself in the corner literally running 60% of south korea's entire economy lmaolmoalmao
@@toriless IBM existed for like 50 years before the mainframe was even invented.
@@timseguine2 I think they meant in the computing space. IBM was around well before mainframes but we aren't talking about punch card systems
This vid gives off really good energy. He has a smile throughout like a kid in a candy store. ♥️
Excellent video !!! Thank you very much for this insight into the "real world of computing"
Got into mainframes and went to the IBM test floor as well a couple times (invited as a student). Made me fall in love with this tech and now i work as an SPA for a global logistics corp that has more than a few of z15s. I've never understood why these didnt get more love. Im so happy we got Linus geeking out over this hardware as much as i did when i first got to see it. Thanks Linus!
As an ex-IBMer I can say that IBM Systems is the last remaining cool and reliable business unit in IBM. ( not counting Red Hat here )
Since the split into consulting, the Client Innovation Centers and Cloud Garages are pretty cool as well :D
whatever happened to Watson?
@@ImNotADeeJay it was more a showcase what our AI could do, it's since been used as a foundation for Watson Discovery and the natural language stuff has been used for our Conversation chatbot framework :)
@@theapproximatetruth5400 would you recommend applying for jobs at those IBM divisons then?
@@atticusrussell1225 I've been in the client innovation center in Denmark for about 5 years, it's been amazing and I have worked on many fantastic projects. I've learned more than i ever thought I would in a relatively short amount of time - so yes it has my warmest recommendations :)
I used to work at IBM a couple months back, doing the exact procedure you're doing (Placing the CPU in the socket, screwing the heatsinnk in WITH AN IMPACT SCREWDRIVER). Each CPU was worth about 25k$ and I managed to drop 3 at once (breaking all of them). The motherboard was worth about 400k$ and the CPUs could draw around 400W each. I actually thought about suggesting to my manager to invite you to make a video and look at what was going on, I am actually very pleased to see this video.
Is that why you used to work there, or did they forgive you?
Now we know why you used to work there
Man really dropped and broke 3x my yearly salary at once
@@c6197 bro you don’t call $25k/year a salary 😭
@@N-cubed The total cost of the motherboard and the 3 CPUs was $475k
I work with the previous release, z15s, every day. Since I do mainly software & operations, I don't get to stand next to them every day. When I was working at Poughkeepsie, I walked down the aisles of the three buildings these test rooms occupy during lunch ... they're all glassed in, what an experience to just stand there and listen to gigawatts being consumed. It's still a gas, more than 40 years later!
Awesome video. I work on mainframes and this is one of the best hardward overviews I've seen in a long time. Nitpick the CICSPlex caption should be Sysplex :)
This has to be one of the coolest and most interesting videos in recent times. Absolutely love everything about this and hope for more exploratory stuff in weird and wonderful custom compute solutions.
glad they're doing manufacturer tours again. missed these type of vids
What I did not hear was anyone mentioning was that at 17:03 when he pulls that card out the rest of the machine is still powered on.
It can still be running an an operating system. Concurrent replacement of parts is huge. Like changing a spark plug with the car running!
The biggest limitation of IBM mainframes is it's custom. You pick what you want and then you have to wait for it to get built and validated. Very few companies can afford the high lead time. I work in the enterprise consulting space and everyone is moving to cloud. Lots of customers that are on mainframe don't really want to upgrade their mainframes. It's just too expensive, slow to upgrade and is harder to scale around the world. If you want geographic redundancy, you have to buy a mainframe for each data center.
@@burrfoottopknot I've been on projects that had to setup redundant setup in multiple locations. You can kind of do it on the cheap for 2 million with 3-4 racks. To do it with mainframes, you're talking 10x higher cost.
I work for a major logistics provider, and our central database runs on an IBM Z-mainframe. We primarily interact with it via a terminal window. No joke, it is the ONLY thing that has never failed, and the core program is older than I am.
Never expected to see Linus yanking it 10 seconds into a video
I bet he felt a strange pulling sensation.
😭
@@armandoaranda639 Alexander's Tech Tips, coming soon.
I remember a couple of years ago I didn’t even know what a GPU was and now I can understand mosft if not all of this, thanks to this channel and BF3’s high PC requirements I got myself into software engineering:)))
Both the content and the sheer enthusiasm made this video a joy to watch.
Imagine being Linus' handler from IBM during this.
Management: yeah don't let him drop anything.
Why do you think we have two of everything?
I imagine this started as a "we really need all this redundancy? it's pretty stable as it is, i doubt anything can ruin our day", "wanna bet?"
They probably gave him one of the ones they had been already testing for months. Usually that is going to be an engineering sample they probably couldn't sell anyway. Replacement cost for the test floor is nonzero, but they already got their value out of it during hardware bring-up
@@JoelJohnson roflmao most of our customers have at least one just like Linus!
did you see the screwdriver he just barely prevented from rolling into the compute module while he was talking? Panik, then relief, then linus moves away to make dramatic noise and the screwdriver heads once more into the abyss, dude just hits send on the resignation email he has already written up.
14:57 That screwdriver totally fell into the case, didn't it.
yes it did hahaha
I worked on a z13 (zLinux and MQ) and that was cutting edge for Mainframe tech. I have been out of that space for awhile but cool to see Mainframe tech still moving forward. I'm sure IBM still charges by the CPU cycle. lol
This video is absolutely fantastic. Best LTT video I've seen in a long time. (also love the turbonerd stuff)
Also as someone studying to go into this field it makes me want to look into working at IBM
Pay at IBM isn’t the highest, but they really reward people that stay with them for a while in a way I’ve seen precious few other companies do- hiring internal for management positions, etc.