“IBM Corp. this week formally launched a new mainframe-class
64-bit processor, dubbed the Freeway, and will reveal details of
the device at next week’s Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif.
The Freeway processor forms the heart of the company’s new highly
redundant zSeries 900 e-servers, which one analyst described as
“enormously scalable and enormously expensive.”
“A new 64-bit operating system, z/OS, takes advantage of the
module’s 64-bit real addressing capability and relieves memory
constraints in applications. Later versions of the z/OS will take
advantage of its 64-bit virtual addressing capability. The zSeries
900 also supports Linux, which utilizes both 64-bit real and
virtual addressing functions.”
“Prices for the zSeries 900 servers begin at $500 per Linux
image, or $1.2 million for 2,500 instances of Linux.”