The z196 microprocessor [1] is a chip made by IBM for their zEnterprise 196 and zEnterprise 114 mainframe computers, announced on July 22, 2010. [2] The processor was developed over a three-year time span by IBM engineers from Poughkeepsie, New York; Austin, Texas; and Böblingen, Germany at a cost of US$1.5 billion. [3]

This publication describes the design, components, functions, features, and capabilities of the IBM zEnterprise® 196 models. It is intended for executives, data processing managers, data processing technical staff, consultants, and vendors who wish to exploit z196 advantages.

The zEnterprise 196 allows up to 3 TB (usable) of redundant array of independent memory (RAIM). The zEnterprise z196 has twice the memory capacity of the z10, and 60% higher total capacity than the z10 (up to 52 GIPS).

Oct 21, 2011 · The z196 is designed with improved scalability, performance, security, resiliency, availability, and virtualization. The z196 Model M80 provides up to 1.6 times the total system capacity of the z10™ EC Model E64, and all z196 models provide up to twice the available memory of the z10 EC.

The z196 CPC is built using IBM modular multibook design that supports one to four books per CPC. Each book contains a Multi-Chip Module (MCM), which hosts the newly designed CMOS 12S1 processor units, storage control chips, and connectors for I/O.

The zEnterprise 196 is comprised of some of the most sophisticated and complex electronic equipment ever integrated into one computer. As such, this hardware needs to be protected from negative environmental impacts to ensure the utmost reliability.

The zBX infrastructure can host select IBM POWER7 and IBM x861 blades. Each blade comes with an installed hypervisor that offers the possibility of running an application that spans z/OS, Linux on System z, AIX on POWER®, or Linux on System x1 but have it under a single umbrella.

The new IBM zEnterprise 196 provides a impressive improvement of the workload driven per CPU, which makes it is very attractive for that workload. These results are comparable with …

Nov 18, 2010 · The z196 offers new functions that require a comprehensive understanding of the available configuration options. This book presents configuration setup scenarios, and discusses implementation examples in detail.

Performance is in Internal Throughput Rate (ITR) ratio based on measurements and projections using standard IBM benchmarks in a controlled environment.