Speak the word “mainframe” to many millennial techies, and the first things that likely come to mind are in the form of grainy sepia photos of floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall computers with big spinning tapes. But that’s far from the reality of the modern mainframe.
Imagine instead up to 240 10-core, 5.2ghz processors, 32TB of RAIM (redundant array of independent memory), hardware-based encryption, and fully hot-swappable hardware components. Those are the specs of the newly released IBM z14 – a single machine that could replace the computing resources of an average corporate data center with room to spare.
The challenge this architecture ecosystem is facing is exactly the perception I kicked off with, and with that, the perception that building a career around such a platform is a mistake. But don’t tell that to the 15 interns who have come through The Linux Foundation’s Open Mainframe Project. With Linux and open source thriving on mainframe, being a “mainframer” has become an intriguing career for students. Just look at some of the work these students have done:
Read more at The Linux Foundation
