IBM Telum

2021: Announcement of the first mainframe processor with built-in AI accelerator

On August 23, 2021, IBM introduced its first mainframe processor with an integrated AI accelerator. The novelty was called IBM Telum.

This solution will form the basis of IBM Z and next-generation LinuxONE. The processor is equipped with a specialized accelerator on the chip for AI outputs, and its design improves performance, safety and availability, the manufacturer claims.

The chip contains 8 processor cores with a clock speed of more than 5 GHz, each core is supported by an upgraded second-level private cache of 32 MB. The L2 caches together form 256 MB of L3 virtual cache and 2 GB of L4 cache.

IBM introduced the first mainframe processor with an integrated AI accelerator

According to IBM representatives, a significant increase in memory cache per core compared to the z15 generation will provide a significant increase in both performance per thread and total capacity. Improving the performance of the Telum processor will provide fast response times in complex transactional systems, especially when combined with real-time AI.

Telum also implemented security enhancements, including transparent encryption of main memory. Processor security enhancements are designed to improve performance and usability in hyperprotected virtual servers and trusted runtime environments, such as sensitive data handling in hybrid cloud environments. Processing operations using Telum can reach up to 100 thousand transactions in 1 second, which is almost 10 times more than the existing processors as of September 7, 2021.

This chip is the first created by the IBM Research AI Hardware Center. The company expects financial firms to use the chip to prevent fraud, not just to detect it.^[1][2]

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