What can we expect to see in z/OS V3?

IBM’s announcement of what we can expect to see in Version 3 of z/OS made me think about how far mainframe computing has come since it was first announced on 7 April 1964. That date means the mainframe is coming up for its 60th birthday soon.

The System/360 was born on that day, as was a whole new world of mainframe computing. IBM’s Big Iron, as it came to be called, took a big step ahead of the rest of the BUNCH (Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data Corporation, and Honeywell). The big leap of imagination was to have software that was architecturally compatible across the entire System/360 line.

It was called System/360 to indicate that this new system would be able to handle every need of every user in the business and scientific worlds because it covered all 360 degrees of the compass. By ensuring backward compatibility, it could emulate IBM’s older 1401 machines, which encouraged customers to upgrade. Famous names among its designers are Gene Amdahl, Bob Evans, Fred Brooks, and Gerrit Blaauw. Gene Amdahl later created a plug-compatible mainframe manufacturing company – Amdahl.

The first mainframe to be delivered went to Globe Exploration Co. in April 1965. Launching and producing the System/360 cost more than $5 billion, making it the largest privately-financed commercial project up to that time. It was a risky enterprise, but one that worked. From 1965 to 1970, IBM’s revenues went up from $3.6 billion to $7.5 billion; and the number of IBM computer systems installed anywhere tripled from 11,000 to 35,000.

Looking at the hardware for a moment, the Model 145 was the first IBM computer to have its main memory made entirely of monolithic circuits. It used silicon memory chips, rather than the older magnetic core technology.

In 1970, the System/370 was introduced. The marketing team said that the System/360 was for the 1960s; for the 1970s you needed a System/370. All thoughts of compass points had gone by then. IBM’s revenues went up to $75 billion and employee numbers grew from 120,000 to 269,000, and, at times, customers had a two-year wait to get their hands on a new mainframe.

1979 saw the introduction of the 4341, which was 26 times faster than the System/360 Model 30. There was no System/380 in the 1980s, but in 1990, the System/390 Model 190 was introduced. This was 353 times faster than the System/360 Model 30.

1985 saw the introduction of the Enterprise System/3090, which had over one-million-bit memory chips and came with Thermal Conduction Modules to speed chip-to-chip communication times. Some machines had a Vector Facility, which made them faster. It replaced the ES/3080.

The 1990s weren’t a good time for people’s perception of the mainframe. However, in terms of development, we saw the introduction of high-speed fibre optic mainframe channel architecture Enterprise System Connection (ESCON).

In the 2000s, we got zSeries (zArchitecture) and z operating systems giving us 24, 31, and 64-bit addressing.

Staying with operating systems for a moment, the System/360 hardware needed an operating system to run on it so I could do all the things that people wanted it to do. So, the original operating system, the troubled OS/360 came into being. This was developed into MVT and MFT, and then OS/VS1 and OS/VS2. And that became MVS, before being called z/OS. And now, expected in the third quarter of this year, we’ll see an AI-infused, hybrid-cloud-oriented version of z/OS. z/OS 3.1 will work best with the z16 mainframe, but it will support z14 models and above.

The z16 has an AI accelerator built onto its Telum processor, which allows it to perform 300 billion deep-learning inferences per day with one millisecond latency. The new operating system will:

• Support a new AI Framework for system operations intended to augment z/OS with intelligence that optimizes IT processes, simplifies management, improves performance, and reduces skill requirements.
• Extend the AI ecosystem by enabling AI co-located with z/OS applications, designed for low-latency response times.
• Control the system with AI-powered workload management that intelligently predicts upcoming workloads and react by allocating an appropriate number of batch runs, thus eliminating manual fine-tuning and trial-and-error approaches.
  

z/OS V3.1 also features cloud capabilities by embracing aspects of cloud-native management of z/OS based on industry standards and access to consistent and modern browser-based interfaces, enabling users to efficiently update and configure z/OS and related software,

z/OS 3.1 also continues to simplify and automate the management of the operating system to help guide the next generation of system programmers, So, it will include:

• A new z/OS callable service, Cloud Data Access, to enable access to data in cloud object stores and to incorporate cloud object data into z/OS workloads.
• A set of modern APIs with a C-based interface, designed to simplify the application effort needed to access NoSQL VSAMDB data sets on z/OS.
• IBM z/OS Container Extensions (zCX) to improve performance and security while running containerized Linux workloads and to support NFS, HTTPS, and IBM WebSphere Hybrid Edition.
• Dedicated real memory pools to improve the behaviour of applications that have a high memory requirement.
• An extension of the z/OS Authorized Code Scanner to provide greater coverage of potential vulnerabilities.
• Enhanced COBOL-Java support that will let 31-bit COBOL call 64-bit Java programs using the IBM Semeru Runtime Certified Edition for z/OS.

All-in all, that’s quite a long journey from what could be done on those first machines with their early operating systems nearly 60 years ago. So, don’t let anyone tell you that mainframes are old technology.