Preview: IBM z/OS v2.5 [pdf]

I&#x27;m always curious about other evolutionary offshoots than the Unix monoculture I mostly inhabit, but this intro...<p>&gt; Adaptive business and operating models, driven by accelerated disruptions, are shaping the future of enterprises today. Enterprises are embracing the next normal with an accelerated and strategic focus on application modernization, cloud-native processes, and artificial intelligence (AI), all in an effort to ensure timely and resilient business use cases and enhanced business applications for a continuous and positive user experience.<p>Are you still not allowed to operate a mainframe without wearing a tie?

&gt; The z15 provides a hardware accelerated approach to sorting using a new CPU coprocessor that can be exploited by software using the new SORTL instruction. By providing one sort accelerator per core, frequently used functions can be accelerated to help speed up sorting, shorten batch windows, and improve select database functions such as reorganization.<p>Having a dedicated coprocessor for sorting is extremely business.

I&#x27;m annoyed by how IBM is trying to add z&#x2F;OS support to open source projects. It makes sense for them of course. But for the projects there&#x27;s little upside and it forces them to spend reviewer time on a system basically nobody uses.<p>Who wants EBCDIC in 2021 [1]? Or workarounds for yet another proprietary compiler everywhere [2]?<p>Open-source projects might want to think about rejecting patches for working around bugs in closed-source compilers, or patches that port to closed-source OSs that don&#x27;t have a significant user base.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.llvm.org&#x2F;pipermail&#x2F;llvm-dev&#x2F;2020-June&#x2F;142300.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.llvm.org&#x2F;pipermail&#x2F;llvm-dev&#x2F;2020-June&#x2F;142300.h...</a> 2: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;fmtlib&#x2F;fmt&#x2F;pull&#x2F;2190" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;fmtlib&#x2F;fmt&#x2F;pull&#x2F;2190</a>

&gt; z&#x2F;OS Container Extensions provides the capability to run Linux on IBM Z softwaredirectly in z&#x2F;OS. This capability enables Linux on Z application code to run on z&#x2F;OSunmodified.<p>Instead of POSIX, we now just ship a whole OS instead as a kind of &quot;modern&quot; VM, given the trend to run Linux on VM across Windows, Solaris, IBM and Unisys mainframes, FreeBSD, macOS, SmartOS some of them are even certified UNIX platforms.

If one wants to try out MVS (near indentical to z&#x2F;OS) on your own pc check that out:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wotho.ethz.ch&#x2F;tk4-&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wotho.ethz.ch&#x2F;tk4-&#x2F;</a><p>And some really good tutorials and code from moshix:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCR1ajTWGiUtiAv8X-hpBY7w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCR1ajTWGiUtiAv8X-hpBY7w</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;moshix" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;moshix</a>

Is it technically possible to run z&#x2F;OS, or some interesting approximation thereof, on a &quot;normal&quot; x86 box?<p>Configurations that would be unusable in any sort of production scenario would probably remain interesting.

I’ve seen many mainframes-aren’t-dead-yet news articles, and that’s clearly true—many large companies began using computers when only mainframes could do the job, have substantial investments in mainframe software, and continue to buy newer and larger mainframes to run it—but are there any <i>new</i> customers?<p>In other words, in the last decade, has IBM sold a mainframe to any organization that didn’t already have one? Do large companies founded more recently, such as Amazon, PayPal, or Tesla, use them at all?

&gt;Authorized code scanner z&#x2F;OS V2.5 is planned to provide, as an optional priced feature, an authorized code scanner of Program Call (PC) and Supervisor Call (SVC) routines for development and test environments. This scanner is designed to prevent unauthorized callers from being incorrectly granted an authorized state by detecting potential vulnerabilities in these routines with diagnostic information for remediation, as needed.<p>So, is this a virus scanner for mainframes?

Honestly, I wish IBM all the best. This is such a closed technology that there is no point in aporoaching it for me.