IBM, the American computing giant, launched its new enterprise z17 mainframe system on Monday. It features the Telum II processor and the new Spyre accelerator, both designed to enhance on-premises AI capabilities.
“In industries where data needs to remain secured but accessible with the lowest latency possible, z17 with Spyre will enable businesses to run generative AI models and agentic AI on-premises,” said IBM in the announcement.
According to TechCrunch, the z17 mainframe is capable of processing 450 billion inference operations per day, doubling the capacity of its predecessor.
It is also reported that HashiCorp, which the company recently acquired, will help implement security features for the z17 mainframe.
“The Spyre accelerator is designed to handle the emerging AI workloads that z17 clients will bring to the platform. It is optimised for generative and agentic AI, for example, rather than models that the field is cooling on — classification models, for example,” said IBM. The company also added that the mainframe systems are designed to handle over 250 use cases.
IBM also said that the ‘z’ series of mainframe systems handles up to 70% of the world’s financial transactions. The core components of the z17, the Telum II and the Spyre accelerator were announced last August.
The Telum II features eight high-performance cores running at 5.5GHz. Telum II will include a 40% increase in on-chip cache capacity, with the virtual L3 and virtual L4 growing to 360MB and 2.88GB, respectively.
Spyre, scheduled for release in Q4 2025, is a dedicated 32-core accelerator available as an optional PCIe expansion card, aimed at enhancing efficiency for AI workloads compared to traditional GPUs.
IBM Acquires Hakkoda
On Monday, IBM also announced the acquisition of Hakkoda, a global data and AI consultancy firm. The acquisition is said to expand IBM Consulting’s data transformation services portfolio, which will be powered by Hakkoda’s strong portfolio of generative AI assets.
"With Hakkoda's data expertise, deep technology partnerships and asset-centric delivery model, IBM will be even better positioned to deliver value faster to clients as they transform with AI," said Mohamad Ali, head of IBM Consulting.
The acquisition was finalised on April 2; IBM did not disclose the financial details of the transaction.
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