IBM and Arm are working together to enable software developed for Arm chips to run on Big Blue’s enterprise systems, with an eye toward future AI and data-intensive workloads.
Big Blue welcomed this latest arrangement as a strategic collaboration with Arm to develop new dual-architecture hardware. The goal is to combine the reliability, security and scalability of IBM’s enterprise systems with Arm’s expertise in power-efficient computing and a broad software ecosystem, the company said.
The partnership focuses on three key areas: using virtualization to enable Arm-based software environments to run within Big Blue’s enterprise computing platforms, such as IBM Z and LinuxONE mainframe kits;
The second area covers the performance and efficiency demands of modern workloads, such as AI and data-intensive applications. IBM says this includes enabling enterprise systems to recognize and run Arm applications, with the goal of making Arm-based environments more compliant with enterprise-grade reliability and security requirements.
The third area is long-term ecosystem growth. IBM is talking about creating a shared technology layer across platforms to increase flexibility in how applications are deployed and managed. The goal is to enable businesses to adopt new applications and architectures while maximizing existing investments.
That last piece appears to be code that allows Big Blue’s enterprise customers to take advantage of the latest AI tools and applications and integrate them into their leading systems that handle mission-critical workloads.
Tina Tarquinio, chief product officer for IBM Z and LinuxONE, said the initiative is a natural extension of the company’s hardware and systems strategy.
“This continues IBM’s pattern of anticipating enterprise needs long before market inflection points and developing capabilities early to prepare customers for the emergence of new workloads and business models,” she asserted. “Our goal is to expand software choices and improve system performance while maintaining the reliability and security our clients expect.”
We asked IBM to clarify the purpose of the collaboration, and a spokesperson kindly replied, “While it’s too early to share details, our intent is to make the same features and qualities of security, performance, resiliency, and cost-effectiveness that distinguish IBM Z and LinuxONE available for Arm64 workloads.” I guess this means they don’t quite understand what they want to do yet.
Mr. Arm was similarly reluctant to elaborate beyond the bare minimum details already given.
“As enterprises expand their AI and modernize their infrastructure, the breadth of the Arm software ecosystem is enabling them to run these workloads in a wider range of environments,” Mohamed Awad, Arm’s vice president of cloud AI, said in a written statement, adding that the collaboration with IBM will build on this progress and extend that ecosystem into mission-critical enterprise environments.
This news comes just over a week after Arm announced its own data center processor aimed at AI workloads called AGI CPU. We asked IBM if this plays any role in the collaboration between the two, and a spokesperson said, “That’s another service that we’re not focused on at this time.”
Patrick Moorhead, chief analyst and CEO of Moor Insights & Strategy, said: register Indeed, this is all there is to running Arm software on Z and LinuxONE hardware. “When you look at the full stack of a system, you have the apps to the OS and every layer in between. Arm, the hyperscaler, is the real deal, and it has everything from the OS to the apps that support it. Everything except the OS can run on the mainframe.”
“Then there’s the scale of the development infrastructure. Arm is very large and growing in the data center, and IBM has done a very good job of developing developers, but Arm’s momentum and scale are undeniable. Netnet’s IBM mainframe customers will have even more software to run on their mainframes,” he added.
Almost exactly one year ago, IBM introduced the latest addition to its mainframe portfolio, the z17 family. This introduced improved Telum II processors and Spyre AI Accelerator cards, one with improved AI inference to perform fraud detection checks on transactions, and the other with support for generative AI and LLM.
We also asked IBM when customers can expect to see the first results of this partnership with Arm. A Big Blue spokesperson said it’s too early to say and the timing depends on a number of factors. ®
