Skip to content
HomeVideos
AllLongsCategoriesPlaylists
BooksBlogsPodcasts
HistoryListsWatch laterLiked videosFollowing

The videos, books, blogs and podcasts Hacker News keeps recommending, all in one place.

VideosBooksBlogsPodcastsAboutPrivacySettings

Data from Hacker News, HackerTube, HackerBooks, HackerBlogs and Open Library. Credits · Not affiliated with Y Combinator.

HomeVideosBooksBlogsPodcasts
Ctrl K

    Why Do Mainframes Still Exist? What's Inside One? 40TB, 200+ Cores, AI, and more!

    Dave's Garage

    3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2023–2024

    YouTube

    23:33 · 1.2M views · Oct 28, 2023

    Dave Plummer tours the IBM z16 mainframe from design through factory assembly, test lab, accelerators and water cooling. He explains why mainframes still exist and what makes them reliable.

    Recommended as an accessible tour of modern mainframes that compares them sensibly to ordinary server setups.

    Hardware & ElectronicsComputer architecture & CPUsCloud, DevOps & reliability
    1. 45:12
      Here's What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a MainframeSHARE Association3.2M views • 10 years ago
    2. 1:26:02
      Stanford Seminar - The Soul of a New Machine: Rethinking the ComputerStanford Online76K views • 6 years ago
    3. 23:41
      The IBM 1401 compiles and runs FORTRAN IICuriousMarc1.4M views • 8 years ago
    4. 52:45
      The Road to PS5PlayStation17M views • 6 years ago
    5. 5:15
      Megaprocessor Tour 1 - (fixed audio)Megaprocessor479K views • 10 years ago
    6. 1:01:07
      The Ultimate Game Boy Talk (33c3)media.ccc.de242K views • 9 years ago
    7. 59:21
      A Crash Course in Modern Hardware by Cliff ClickDevoxx21K views • 9 years ago
    8. 20:29
      Over 200,000 Servers in One Place! Visiting Hetzner in Falkenstein (Germany)der8auer EN1.6M views • 5 years ago
    9. 29:44
      EEVblog #1341 - AMAZING $250,000 IBM Processor TEARDOWN!EEVblog714K views • 6 years ago
    10. 2:50:14
      Simple Code, High PerformanceMolly Rocket464K views • 5 years ago
    11. 46:37
      Zebras All the Way Down - Bryan Cantrill, Uptime 2017Code & Supply49K views • 9 years ago
    12. 51:50
      [11] Mike Clark, AMD Zen Chief ArchitectTechTechPotato27K views • 5 years ago
    13. 1:16:58
      code::dive conference 2014 - Scott Meyers: Cpu Caches and Why You CareNOKIA Technology Center Wrocław231K views • 11 years ago
    14. 1:01:27
      ZFS: The Last Word in File Systems Part 1Deirdré Straughan19K views • 14 years ago
    15. 1:48:55
      The Thirty Million Line ProblemMolly Rocket326K views • 8 years ago
    16. 19:25
      New computers don't speed up old codeMatthias random stuff187K views • 1 year ago
    17. 2:55:13
      Oral History of Gary Davidian, part 2 of 2Computer History Museum1.8K views • 7 years ago
    18. 1:26:50
      The Mill CPU Architecture - the Belt (2 of 13)Mill Computing, Inc.38K views • 13 years ago
    19. 6:53
      8-bit computer updateBen Eater2.8M views • 10 years ago
    20. 1:02:52
      Joanna Rutkowska: Towards (reasonably) trustworthy x86 laptopsmedia.ccc.de27K views • 10 years ago

    4 comments from Hacker News

    1. @virgulinoSep 2024· in “Telum II at Hot Chips 2024: Mainframe with a Unique Caching Strategy”

      "Why Do Mainframes Still Exist? What's Inside One? 40TB, 200+ Cores, AI, and more! - Dave explores the IBM z16 mainframe from design to assembly and testing. What's inside a modern IBM z16 mainframe that makes it relevant today?" - by Dave Plummer. This is an amazing 23-minute video by the Microsoft programmer who developed the Windows NT Task Manager, among other things. He visits IBM and talks to engineers about the Telum chip architecture (Hot Chips 2023), used in the z16 mainframe. Special attention is paid to the cache. this video

      Strongly recommendsView on HN
    2. @baneDec 2023· in “The Rise and Fall of the 'IBM Way'”

      Great comment. IBM is as IBM wants to be. I don't think there's a mystery to it and they've ended up on an evolutionary path that can't be reversed. To wit, I just watched a long form video [1] on the passion that goes into IBM mainframes including some interesting clips of various physical robustness tests of the assembled systems. It reminded me of watching clips from various space programs where a largely full-up untested rocket had to put humans into orbit without blowing up. Another revolution that's occurred, but IBM chose not to really follow (asterisk) is the idea that you assume some percentage of your hardware will fail (instead of trying to make it never die) -- then you engineer around that. I'm not sure what will win in the end, but right now the entire industry is telling us to have failover into different availability zones in Amazon, or even across clouds -- one of which IBM offers. 1 - this video (asterisk) - IBM does sort of have an understanding of this of course, they have a cloud after all.

      RecommendsView on HN
    3. @Tor3Feb 2024· in “New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured Linux mainframe”

      Check out this youtube video: this video It does a reasonably good job at comparing mainframes to a regular server setup. It's not about SPEC or GFLOPs etc.

      RecommendsView on HN
    4. @KeyframeFeb 2024· in “New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured Linux mainframe”

      Dave Plummer recently did a tour: this video It's definitely intriguing if it were.. I don't know, available to tinker with?

      CitesView on HN