IBM LinuxONE 5 Gets the Telum II Treatment
Tina Tarquinio, VP of product management for IBM Z and LinuxONE, speaks with TechChannel about the performance, security and cost savings of the offering, introduced last week
With its latest hardware offering, IBM is bringing the firepower of its new Telum II processor to Linux-only environments.
Introduced May 5, the IBM LinuxONE 5 is based on similar architecture to the z17, which was introduced in April and also features the Telum II. “We’re truly providing enterprise grade to the open source world so that our clients can do more with less in Linux at scale,” Tina Tarquinio, VP of product management for IBM Z and LinuxONE, tells TechChannel.
Both the IBM LinuxONE 5 and IBM z17 are slated for general availability June 18.
With IBM LinuxONE 5, IBM continues its partnership with Red Hat and other open source solutions providers. “If you are really having a highly thoughtful containerized workload strategy and you have high synergy with Red Hat, it may make a lot of sense to run on LinuxONE,” Tarquinio says.
She adds that IBM’s dedicated Linux server may also be sensible for users in industries with strict requirements around security, privacy and service level agreements (SLAs), with Linux thriving in high-scale, highly secure environments.
Like with the IBM z17, LinuxONE 5 can be equipped with up to 48 IBM Spyre Accelerators , expected to be available in Q4 2025. Spyre and Telum II are being rolled out with AI at top of mind, offering users the ability to bring multi-model AI tasks on premises while benefitting from real-time fraud detection capabilities. LinuxONE 5 can handle 450 billion inference operations per day, with a 1 millisecond response time in AI fraud detection, according to IBM’s testing.
Security, Performance and x86 Comparisons
In addition to its focus on protecting consumers from fraudsters, LinuxONE 5 also prioritizes its own system security. “The hardware security module in LinuxONE 5 is really industry-leading. We have the most advanced certifications, either in FIPs [Federal Information Processing Standards] or EAL5 [Evaluation Assurance Level 5], and that’s backed by quantum-safe encryption,” Tarquinio notes.
With security at the hardware, virtualization and container layers, “it really is a full stack of the most secure environment you can have, and there’s no give on performance or resiliency or availability,” she says. According to IBM, LinuxONE 5 offers up to eight 9s (99.999999%) of availability.
By providing energy efficiency while taking up less floor space, LinuxONE 5 provides significant savings, according to IBM. When measured against a comparable number of x86 servers, LinuxONE 5 provides 75% savings in total cost of ownership over five years, Tarquinio says, noting that a single LinuxONE can do the work of just over 2,000 x86 servers.
“All of that data center space—when you consolidate, you use less energy,” she explains. “So there’s savings there. You consolidate at the software level, so you have license savings. And then, our systems are more performant. So you actually run more workload in that smaller environment.”
Learn more about LinuxONE 5 by attending IBM’s virtual event, LinuxONE: Unlocked, on May 13 at 10 a.m. EDT. The event will also be available afterward for on-demand viewing.