IBM to ship world's fastest production processor

An IBM engineer tests the z196 processor

IBM has confirmed that it will ship servers next week containing the world's fastest production processor.

The z196 is built around 45nm process technology and can run at up to 5.2GHz. The chips will be used in the new zEnterprise 196 mainframe line that will launch on 10 September.

"This is a significant step forward for mainframe computing," said IBM fellow Charles Webb.

"Financial institutions are doing many more transactions, but they also want to do more processing on those. That's driving more and more compute power around all of those transactions."

The zEnterprise 196 uses 96 microprocessors capable of more than 50 billion instructions per second, and IBM claims a 60 per cent improvement in Java and data-heavy workloads while running on reduced energy loads.

The financial sector is a major user of these kinds of systems. Such computing power allows huge numbers of stock trades to be placed speculatively and then rescinded depending on fluctuations in the market.

The systems are so important that Goldman Sachs sued former employee Sergey Aleynikov last year for copying its stock control software.

IBM spent three years and $1.5bn (£974m) developing the new processor technology in a co-operative effort by labs in New York, Texas, Germany, Israel and India.