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Revolutionary design will bring Arm-native applications to IBM's flagship mainframes and servers, broadening software choice for enterprise computing
At the annual Hot Chips conference, IBM (NYSE: www.IBM.com/investor" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">IBM) today is announcing the first dual-architecture mainframe processor, which is being designed to enable enterprises to run operating systems and applications on both the IBM and Arm® compute platforms in future IBM Z and LinuxONE systems. This marks the first processor milestone to emerge from the IBM and Arm collaboration established in April 2026, and represents a significant advance in enterprise computing. The new processor is being developed to allow organizations to run Arm-native Linux environments simultaneously with zOS and Linux on IBM Z, while benefiting from IBM's established security, reliability, and scale.
With more than 22 million developers worldwide, the Arm software ecosystem supports a broad and growing range of applications from cloud to edge, including the cloud-native and AI software increasingly shaping modern infrastructure. This new processor will bring that ecosystem to the IBM platforms known globally for transaction processing and data-intensive operations. Arm workloads will benefit from IBM's enterprise-grade capabilities, including enhanced reliability, hardware-level fault detection and recovery, advanced encryption, secure key management, and AI acceleration.
Built on a 2 nanometer technology node, the processor's design will contain 11 high-performance cores operating at more than 5.7 GHz, AI inference accelerators for in-transaction fraud detection, a dedicated on-chip data processing unit for I/O acceleration, and a large cache architecture for demanding enterprise workloads. The chip is architected to not contain separate Arm and IBM cores: each processor core can natively execute Arm and IBM Z, or Arm and LinuxONE, instructions concurrently while prioritizing the platform's established performance, security, encryption, and availability characteristics. IBM Z and LinuxONE platforms are capable of scaling to hundreds of cores and tens of terabytes of memory.
"As organizations modernize their application portfolios and integrate AI into core business operations, they need infrastructure that expands their options," said Christian Jacobi, Chief Technology Officer and IBM Fellow, IBM Systems Development. "This processor represents a significant architectural advancement for IBM Z and LinuxONE. By bringing Arm natively to our platform, we're combining access to one of the industry's fastest-growing software ecosystems with the qualities that have made IBM systems the foundation for how businesses run today."
"As AI scales, more of the computing landscape is converging on Arm," said Mohamed Awad, Executive Vice President, Cloud AI, Arm. "IBM Z and LinuxONE power some of the world's most demanding workloads in highly regulated industries. Bringing Arm compute and its software ecosystem to these platforms will extend that momentum into mission-critical enterprise infrastructure to give organizations greater choice in how they deploy AI."
This milestone represents a major step forward in IBM and Arm's shared vision of expanding application choice and access to the latest in software innovation for enterprise computing without compromising the capabilities these environments demand.
Statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.
Additional Sources
- IBM Community blog
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