Re: Support for five more years ?
“Your Crisis is not my emergency”
Fujitsu evaluated the business case for *developing new mainframe chips*, and decided there wasn’t one. Back in 2017, when they decided to stop after SPARC64 XII. Five years later, it’s five years later. I’m not sure how this comes as a surprise to anybody.
IBM Power 10 is out now (on Samsung 7nm) to power the IBM z16 this year. A chip that complex probably cost IBM 1-2billion to develop. There is a roadmap for POWER11 in 2026, which would likely go on 3nm. If they strip the development absolutely to the bone, and just go for a pure die-shrink (zero new stuff) and packaged chiplets, they can probably keep the development costs under 5billion. But if there were to be a POWER12 on 1nm…..there’s just no way that is costing less than 20billion. For sales of only 2.5bn a year. POWER12 is just never going to happen, and I suspect that POWER11 might not either if IBM had stronger management.
Mainframes might be great for your business, but the development costs are ballooning beyond any credible ongoing business case.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
