Broadcom – adapts/innovates for client success and end-to-end security services for hybrid IT

At its recent quarterly analyst briefing Broadcom Mainframe reviewed their performance to date, announced their new enterprise security products, and had clients describe successful projects where Broadcom’s products and services led to significant benefits using in-place IT infrastructure and cloud integration. All helping to validate Broadcom’s partnering strategy to help customers achieve their goals and overcome critical business challenges.

Broadcom also discussed their own successful efforts at adapting operations and strategies to deal with the challenges of a business environment hampered by Covid-19-driven restrictions and controls.

Broadcom elaborated on its commitment to an “open-first” product strategy. They are committed to building on an extensive existing foundation of open technologies and expanding the use of the ZOWE framework. Open-source education and open cloud efforts are promoted as they deliver innovative solutions and services to customers.  

Broadcom raises the bar for hybrid computing services with Broadcom Mainframe Security Insights Platform which combines their own and partner products to provide pervasive security services from endpoint all the way to the mainframe.

 Here is a look at activities and accomplishments since the last briefing. 

Investment and growth

The recently announced results of the 15^th State of the Mainframe Survey^[1] confirm that the mainframe continues to expand its role in enterprise operations and transformation activities. A massive shift to remote work, on-line commerce, and severely reduced interpersonal contacts have escalated security requirements and staffing issues. But it also provides Broadcom and customers multiple opportunities to leverage mainframe and existing infrastructure strengths.

While Broadcom does not report revenues by division, they did reveal that the revenues from the Mainframe Software Division has grown every quarter since acquisition. This along with growing staff (nearly 150 this year) and expanding support activities suggests that it has proven a good investment for both Broadcom and its customers.  

Adapting to an evolving Business Environment

The impact of COVID-19 affects all vendors, whether involved in banking, manufacturing, retail, services, or technology, all are undergoing radical change in operations and interactions with employees, customers, and suppliers.

 Broadcom adopted plans to assure employees are protected while still providing high quality products and services to customers. In-house staff rotate between on-site and remote work to maintain continuity in communications and business operations. At any one time, approximately 50% of the staff are working on-site. Customers decides if they want to have Broadcom staff work on-site. 

The broadly popular Broadcom Vitality Program (no-cost resources assigned to a specific customer) and Win-no-Fee services program continue at the customer’s discretion. The on-going close relationships yield significant benefits to both parties.

On-site with customers means that Broadcom staff are well positioned to recognize opportunity, and thereby increase their contribution to customer success. Two customer examples demonstrate how this can pay off.

 The first example involves a major retailer facing staffing challenges. A Broadcom Vitality Program resident trained in basic mainframe skills had just been placed. The residents typically work with client staff to build core skills. However, times are not normal. The customer faced critical project deadlines as they shifted to a digital operating model. Some staff had to be furloughed which put these deadlines at risk.

 Broadcom’s resident offered to take on more responsibilities and a leadership role in the project. The customer accepted. Working together, they identified new opportunities to improve customer operations. The experience and responsibility proved beneficial and valuable to all. And it led to the resident being offered a position as a full-time employee.

 In another instance, a financial services customer needed to deploy a self-service capability using z/OSMF, an IBM software product. COVID-driven staffing disruptions threatened project completion. Broadcom was offering expanded support to assist customers. This customer challenged Broadcom to help with the deployment. Broadcom experts familiar with z/OSMF were assigned to assist. The deployment took just two weeks.

 These are just two examples that reflect Broadcom’s expansive view of customer relationship and deep partnerships. We suspect more such stories exist.

Increasing Remote and Digital Services, Events, etc.

COVID’s impact is felt not only in business models but also in how and when in-place IT infrastructure is leveraged. Basic to Broadcom’s strategy is “meeting the customer where they are”. This meant lots of on-site, face-to-face skills training, customer-staffed research fellowships, etc. As discussed here^[2], Broadcom offers a variety of educational and support services, available in-person and some, on-line.

 COVID restrictions and mandates made face-to-face interaction a no-go. Even before such complications, the popularity of classes led Broadcom to plan expansions to the curriculum with some select classes moving on-line. COVID sped up the process.

 Broadcom radically increased its participation in on-line, on-demand, remote sessions, and digitized events. They held fifteen remote Mainframe Innovation World Tour^[3] events in ten (10) weeks. They participated in events for SHARE, IDUG, Marist ECC, Open Mainframe Summit, etc. Registrations for The Broadcom Mainframe Technical Exchange 2020^[4] held October 13^th - 15^th doubled over last year’s event.

 Digitized education doesn’t stop with technical staff. A significant gap in mainframe knowledge exists among a new generation of business and IT executives. They grew up with an intimate familiarity of personal computers, local computing, and cloud services. But they are sadly ill-informed on the role of the mainframe, and its critical role in enterprise computing.

 Broadcom’s  Mainframe Executive Learning Program^[5] is designed for executives to learn about the “mainframe as a strategic platform”. The inaugural session in August had 37 executive participants. Originally an in-person class, it is now available in on-line monthly installments.

 Broadcom’s commitment and investment to the mainframe platform, now and for the future, was an on-going theme. This provided an appropriate segue to a discussion about iOCO, a customer that built an entire business model around a highly accessible mainframe. Senior iOCO executives described how they attract and delight customers by delivering Banking-as-a-Service across Africa. Core banking services are delivered from a mainframe-based cloud powered by Broadcom software. Hi-level customization allows new services and functionality to be quickly developed and reliably delivered at scale.

Security new and evolving risks

The mainframe has a well-deserved reputation for security. However, existing services for encryption, complex passwords, identity, and access administration are insufficient to secure today’s enterprise operations. Hybrid IT computing by itself poses significant security challenges. An explosion in remote work with increasing digital contacts is driving security risks to new levels of variety, urgency, and complexity.

 A proliferation of bad actors in on-line communities increases the risk of outsider threats in the form of false/compromised identities/credentials, nation-state intrusion, rogue individuals, and hackers. Insider risks are increasing in multiple ways including rogue users, password sharing, unintentional errors, benign shortcuts to save time - all  compromise security systems.

External threats escalate as remote, distributed access raises questions of who can be trusted – the classical identity problem. Is the user who they claim to be? Mandated regulations and standards meant to protect personal as well as enterprise data, privacy and information have increased financial/legal risks in policy setting and administration. To address these evolving risks, Broadcom expanded its line of security service products and offerings. They announced their Security Insights platform and discussed synergies with the Symantec solution.

Broadcom Security: Partnering and investing for customer success

Broadcom expanded into enterprise security in a big way. Combining Broadcom’s Mainframe Security Insights Platform, Top Secret, CA ACF2 and Symantec’s Secure services, they can now offer complete end-to-end (mainframe, distributed, cloud, endpoint, payment, etc.) security services. They have customers willing to testify to the quality and ease of implementation of the comprehensive solution.

Image courtesy of Broadcom, Inc.

 The Broadcom’s Mainframe Security Insights platform will identify and assess where to focus enterprise efforts to address security risks and threats. It leverages existing security tools and capabilities to collect data from mainframe and other infrastructure tools. Automatically correlated and analyzed data feed standard and custom reports covering security status and risks including:

•         Assessments that identify risks, security gaps, health checks, etc.
•         Identify gaps in the security lifecycle
•          Analytics-based advice and best practices guidance risk reducing action.

 Access to Security Insights is included with licensed Broadcom Mainframe Security products. We expect to hear more about this product. For now see: Broadcom Mainframe Security Insights Platform.

 Illustrating the workings of Broadcom’s partnership activities, M&T Bank discussed bank-specific security challenges. They provided details on how Broadcom services and products helped them to significantly reduce risk and improve identity management. They described leveraging Broadcom security services to provide an exceptional experience and secure bank services to both employees and banking customers. And they exemplify points made earlier about partnership as they are working with Broadcom on future capabilities for the security portfolio.

The Final Word

Broadcom’s dedication to the success of its customers is clear. It lies at the very core of their operations.  At every opportunity, they emphasize, and provide concrete examples, of real services related to education, analysis, training, advisory, and research that are directed to customer success.

Broadcom is unique in the range and number of services provided at no cost to customers. The emphasis of staff on-site at customers is first and foremost on identifying and delivering what is necessary for customer success. It isn’t a tactic to pump up sales, but to get the most out of existing infrastructure and identifying opportunities to achieve the customer’s goals.

We have promoted the concept of identifying and tailoring services to helping customers  achieve their goals. Broadcom is proving itself not only dedicated to but significantly adept at applying that ambition. We think their customers agree.

 

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^[1] See: https://tinyurl.com/yxz9357u

^[2] See: https://ptakassociates.blogspot.com/2020/08/broadcom-clients-partners-in-successful.html

^[3] See: https://mainframe.broadcom.com/mainframe-innovation-world-tour-teaser-video

^[4] See: https://mainframe.broadcom.com/mainframe-technical-exchange-digital-experience-2020

^[5] See: https://mainframe.broadcom.com/executive-learning-program

IBM reveals its roadmap to a commercialized quantum system

Figure 1 Next Gen IBM  Q "Super Fridge"

    IBM recently published its roadmap to the 2023 delivery of IBM Quantum Condor, a 1121-qubit quantum system, a major and significant advance over today’s “noisy, small-scale devices”. The Condor system opens the door to 1 million+ qubit devices and sets the stage for systems with the stability, reliability, and scalability necessary to realize the full advantages of quantum computing, actual demonstration of  quantum supremacy and eventual commercial exploitation.

IBM’s roadmap describes the transition from today’s small-scale quantum research[1] and relatively limited function devices to a system that will allow fuller engineering  exploitation of quantum systems. It describes annual capacity increases and evolving functionality that will address and reduce today’s challenges in stability, error reduction, and scalability. It anticipates knowable emerging challenges and will be adaptive to address unknown, emerging challenges.

 From IBM Quantum System One to IBM Quantum Condor

Here is a quick summary. Today, IBM provides public and clients with access to over two dozen stable IBM quantum systems hardware via the cloud. To date, a quarter of million users have accessed, created, and run some 300 billion hardware circuits on these devices. These devices are the most intensively and exhaustively used quantum devices in the world. The devices range from the 5-qubit IBM Quantum Canary to the largest, most recently released 65-qubit IBM Quantum Hummingbird. IBM will release incrementally larger systems each year the127-qubit IBM Quantum Eagle in 2021 and the 433-qubit IBM Quantum Osprey in 2022 which ends the IBM Quantum System One family. The1121-qubit IBM Quantum Condor arrives in 2023. It is the first in a new generation of IBM quantum systems.

Part of the transition entails a shift from circuits running on today’s quantum devices to those running on quantum motherboards that can be “connected” to allow scaling to multi-million qubit systems. This will involve further miniaturization of quantum components and a shift of some management and control functions to the motherboard.

                                       

To accommodate post IBM Quantum System One scaling, a much larger dilution refrigerator is needed. IBM has already started developing the larger “SuperFridge” chamber. See Figure 1. This roadmap dramatically illustrates an acceleration in the pace of quantum’s evolution.

IBM’s public statement underscores once again their deep understanding, broader vision and continuing influence on the advancement of quantum computing. The IBM announcement is available here[2]. It is well worth reading.

IBM’s visionary quantum systems

IBM, and others have been involved in quantum research and technology for some time. There are large number of quantum devices mostly simulators or specialized devices. Some boast having a significant number of qubits.  Aside from the impressive speed and promises of IBM’s development cycle, what makes this so special? A short review of how and where IBM got to this point provides an answer.

 Over the last two decades and operating at the extreme edge of scientific knowledge, the path from scientific theory to usable technology to a workable quantum computing system was incredibly challenging and, consequently expensive. It requires significant changes and involves activities extending far beyond what a single company could possibly manage alone. It  requires building and servicing a global quantum-informed and -educated community along with a commercial ecosystem to develop, drive and support a market.

 IBM’s comprehensive vision and the development path taken was unique, contributing to their significant success. They understood introducing something as radically different as quantum technology would require a large community of different interdependent efforts. They envisioned a large multi-faceted project akin to the Apollo program of many decades ago. An “agile” community with multiple parallel lines of activity undertaken by a variety of different players, competitors, partners, customers and others as time and circumstances dictated. Relationships, roles, participants and activities changed and adapted outside and beyond IBM’s control. IBM had to identify where to focus their efforts, what not to do, as well as where and how to exert influence to assure independent, but vital efforts were undertaken.

 IBM’s strength was as a builder of systems. Their goal was to deliver a real quantum computing system, not a simulator, not an emulator, not a limited single-function optimizer. They started at the most basic level of hardware, expanding as needed to include operating and eventually development software.

 As dictated by events and opportunity, IBM undertook complementary activities, projects, partnership, etc. These involved internal, as well as external parties spanning an increasingly global quantum community. IBM participation ranged from initial launch and delivery of services to technology and tool contribution all helping to grow a community and network built on open standards.

IBM has offered unique direction and been a major influence in the development of quantum computing. Here are just three significant areas:

1. IBM conceived of a complete quantum computing system, not just a research project. They understood that to make quantum real required wide access to  actual quantum computing system hardware. They also recognized that success depended upon the execution of parallel development efforts with direct IBM influence in multiple areas and indirect contributions in many more.
2. IBM fostered the growth of a quantum community through mass democratization of access to quantum devices and tools for research, education, development, and application. They provided access via a combination of free and for-fee services to some two dozen quantum devices positioned around the world (IBM Quantum Experience[3], IBM Q Network[4], etc.).
3. IBM encourages and contributes to an open source quantum environment with tools (Qiskit[5], an Open Source quantum development kit), performance metric (Quantum Volume (QV)) and open cooperation and information sharing.

The Final Word

In September of 2017, we published a commentary (IBM Research on the Road to commercial Quantum Computing[6]) about IBM and quantum computing. We were motivated by IBM’s efforts to advance quantum computing from a research project to the status of an emerging technology with potentially significant benefits to enterprises of all sorts. Potential applications ranged from creation of exotic materials through molecular manipulation to optimization of asset utilization for scheduling delivery routes, allocation of market trading funds, etc. At that time, speculation was that truly commercialized quantum computing was at least 10, but likely more years away.

 IBM, wisely, is not forecasting a hard delivery date. This roadmap details IBM’s plan to reach the next critical inflexion point for quantum computing as it becomes commercially viable. We believe this is encouraging indication that we will see a commercial system within a decade from today. We expect IBM’s efforts will significantly influence the delivery date, whenever it comes.

 Congratulations to IBM for their contributions to date. We look forward to commenting on and discussing their efforts moving forward.

 You can find more of our commentary about IBM and quantum supremacy here[7] and on quantum use cases here[8].

 

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[1] See our discussion on quantum’s evolutionary path from speculative scientific theory to exploitable engineering technology here: https://ptakassociates.blogspot.com/2017/09/ibm-research-on-road-to-commercial.html.. See also: https://ptakassociates.blogspot.com/2017/12/ibm-q-network-moving-quantum-computing.html

[2] IBM’s roadmap for scaling quantum technology https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2020/09/ibm-quantum-roadmap/

[3] See: https://quantum-computing.ibm.com/

[4] See: https://tinyurl.com/wokn3tb

[5] See: https://qiskit.org/

[6] See: https://ptakassociates.blogspot.com/search?q=on+the+road+to+commercial+computing; 

 [7] See on quantum supremacy:  https://ptakassociates.blogspot.com/2018/03/speeding-advancement-of-quantum.html ;

[8] See about use cases: https://ptakassociates.blogspot.com/2019/10/do-quantum-use-cases-really-exist.html

Broadcom + Clients = Partners in Successful Transformation

As a follow-on to our earlier discussion of  Broadcom’s business strategy[1], plans and products, we review Broadcom activities aimed at helping clients succeed in a changing business environment based on the results of Broadcom’s details of successful client partnerships. We start with a description of how the emerging business environment impacts enterprise operation. Then, we discuss Broadcom activities.

Broadcom’s strategy is based on close client partnerships dedicated to getting optimal value from the client’s existing infrastructure, especially the mainframe. Their plans build on a foundation of solutions that make extensive use of open technologies and products including Open API’s, open source code, etc., exploiting open clouds, and enabling new enterprise innovation. Broadcom aims to be the best partner to aid clients to achieve successful transformations. They are increasingly convincing in that role. 

A Changing Business Environment

Today and for the foreseeable future, business, education, entertainment, medicine, etc. are undergoing radical changes in how they operate and interact with employees, customers, suppliers, and partners. Messaging, sales techniques and processes are evolving, driven by political and environmental pressures. These add to an already accelerated pace in the emergence and application of new technologies, expanding security requirements and demands for faster response times. With much corporate data and transactions dependent and residing on mainframes, the mainframe team plays a vital role in transformation.

For technology solution providers and consumers, this adds to the necessity for and complexity of enterprise transformation. Most enterprises already recognize the need to adapt and evolve business models and processes. As we discuss later, Mercedes recognized a changing environment, and quickly adapted their sales process. Both Amazon and Walmart, early movers in enterprise transformation, are reaping the benefit today’s environment. Leveraging IT infrastructure to efficiently supply customers with no-/minimal contact is a key factor in this success.

Many companies still need to make the transition. Most have underutilized, under-leveraged technology, particularly mainframes, that can aid such efforts. When confronted with a crisis, people are more willing to change. Most enterprise teams will recognize the need for a partner to assist them. Smart ones seek help from experienced companies, such as Broadcom for aid during transformation.

The New Environment for operations

First, a review of emerging changes affecting enterprise operations. Then, we look at Broadcom’s efforts and experiences.

One change encourages severe limits, if not elimination of face-to-face contact. Limits, mandatory and recommended, affect social distancing, group gathering, face masks drive process changes while speeding the intelligent service automation even as they foster increased cooperation and remote interaction. Security concerns expand the use of facial-monitoring/-recognition technologies, robot/drone usage, automated order-checking, etc. Problems vary by geography, industry, company, but commonalities exist.

Reduced face-to-face contact via on-line transactions has been trending for some time. But escalating pressures for no/minimal contact expand and speed its adoption. The impact is reflected in marketing, messaging, even delivery. One US pizza company no longer advertises speedy delivery of hot, customized pizzas with cheesy crusts. Instead, it is the joy of no-contact pizza procurement. From order to delivery “untouched by human hands” thereby avoiding viral infection.

Consider automobile purchasing. For decades, a highly personal, interaction occurring in dealership showrooms. In a contact-intensive process, potential customers physically examined, and test drove automobiles. Eventually, negotiating a purchase with a sales rep. What happens when today’s contact-adverse customer wants a car? An acquaintance wanted a high-end SUV but wanted no in-person contact. He wanted a contact-free process from research-to-purchase. His first-choice dealer required face-to-face contact. He found a Mercedes dealer able to do everything on-line. From arranging the test-drive to the post-purchase pick-up, all done with no in-person contact.  

Enterprise transformation is a must today. Fortune Magazine reports[2] that over 63% of executives are accelerating their investment in digital transformation during Covid-19. The impact is felt in many areas including planning, employee relations, staffing, personnel policies, etc. Companies that adapt, will thrive, those delaying or refusing to adapt, will falter, even fail. Broadcom helps customer to successfully  transform.

Broadcom Partnering and Investing for Customer Success

Transformations require major operational changes. It may require new or modifications to existing apps, skills training and enhancement, or process adjustments involving or dependent upon IT. It requires cross-enterprise coordination and cooperation among multiple staffs. All completed as soon as possible.

Broadcom focuses on forming close working partnerships with its customers. This helps them develop programs that provide value beyond just software. Programs include Win-No-Fee Services, multiple training/knowledge sharing options, Consumption Licensing, and Mainframe Resource Intelligence (MRI) which are customized  mainframe health, optimization, and rationalization assessments . Customer defined projects range from accelerating product deployments to gaining larger, faster ROI from existing infrastructure. Key to their success is the emphasis on services and products that will deliver visible benefits. Let’s take a deeper look at some of these  programs.

First, Win-No-Fee Services provide client staff with access to Broadcom resources that will help customers identify and pursue ways to ”get more from their mainframe.” Resources are made available to help customers complete specific transformation projects with defined, measurable goals. These free migration services help speed ROI from your software rationalization efforts.

Resources deployed include Broadcom products, SME (subject-matter-expert) services, training, and access to specialized (proprietary, non-product) utilities/tools. Broadcom staff can work on-site, or bring customer IT staff in-house for side-by-side training, cooperative research, etc. Performance metrics have included successful process revision, product deployment, portfolio rationalization, etc.

Second, multiple education and training[3] options are offered. These range from basic mainframe-introduction to skills training for experienced mainframers. Both free and for-fee activities, training, webinars, seminars are available. Classes are offered on-line as well as in-person.

To help recruit and train new mainframe talent, Broadcom's Vitality Program partners with customers to recruit and train new mainframe talent. At no cost to the customer, a prospect participates in a rigorous training and mentoring program. Customers can evaluate participants, and potentially hire graduates.

An Executive Learning program is dedicated to help executives understand the mainframe and its potential to contribute to enterprise success. It also helps executives promote interaction and cooperation among IT (and other) staff groups as they search for solutions. Originally designed as a face-to-face classroom experience, popular demand is driving it to be offered as an on-demand, on-line course.

We can’t cover all services here. Others to examine include a Mainframe Consumption Licensing model that simplifies the pricing model to help customers manage and maintain predictable costs and detailed assessment programs that identify opportunities for improvement and savings through proactive maintenance (Mainframe Health), and better workload management (MRI). These are powerful tools that increase awareness of and extract the potential of added value residing in mainframes.  

The Final Word

Broadcom uses frequent, close cooperation and interaction with customers to better understand and help them become more proficient at leveraging their existing resources. This also provides insights that guide Broadcom’s future direction and strategy.

The Broadcom team demonstrates it has significant technical expertise and managerial skills. In our discussions, they handled both detailed technical questions and business inquiries. Broadcom gave an excellent review of their ability to aid customers in leveraging the mainframe as part of the transformation process. They provided details on their own application of technology to address customer needs.

Nothing wrong there, but every technology vendor bombards clients with such details. What few do is connect the application of technology to the enterprise customer’s goal which is, or should be, attracting and servicing their customers.

In many enterprises, technology is viewed as a delivery or enabling vehicle to get a service, product, benefit, or experience to a customer or market. Broadcom’s immediate customers want a successful IT transformation. However, that customer’s real success comes from effectively, economically leveraging their infrastructure to meet their customer’s needs.

Broadcom has demonstratively proven knowledge and expertise at training mainframe teams to accelerate the transformation process. We suggest that the Broadcom team move beyond technical details and challenges to address the next level of enterprise interest, i.e. how technology, and specifically transformation help drive business success. Broadcom’s makes this happen in their partnerships. They can benefit by making the connection explicit. 

Finally, Broadcom should consider conducting an inventory of company assets and resources with the view of commercializing them even more. In-house tools and utilities used to help customers migrate applications are likely candidates for productization.The more we speak with Broadcom, the more impressive they appear to be. We look forward to hearing more from and about them.

 

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[1] See https://ptakassociates.blogspot.com/

[2] See https://fortune.com/2020/05/06/pandemic-innovation-impetus-ceo-daily

[3] See https://www.broadcom.com/support/education-training/specialized-training/mainframe-training

IBM POWER10 – to arrive in 2021 with high expectations!

 

POWER10 chip Courtesy IBM

 

 

 

 

We have followed IBM’s POWER products[1] since their first appearance as “Power PC”, when even some Apple systems had a POWER microprocessor. We followed its evolution with commentary, analysis, and insights on its evolution and improvements up to the current (Aug. 17, 2020) IBM POWER10 announcement. Overall, we are fans, believing it to be a worthy challenger to Intel’s server market domination. Here we review and comment on the latest announcement. All quotes are from the press release[2].

If it meets IBM’s expectations, POWER10 is potentially an impressive, market-leading product. Here’s a summary of some of its anticipated advantages as stated in the IBM press release:

• This will be “IBM’s first commercialized processor built using 7nm process technology”.  It “is expected to deliver up to a 3x gain in processor energy efficiency per socket” over a comparable POWER9 chip. This “anticipated” 3-fold improvement far exceeds the typical 30% or so of past incremental increases. It “is designed to allow new POWER10 systems built around this chip to support up to 3x increases in users, workloads and OpenShift container density for hybrid cloud workloads as compared to IBM POWER9-based systems”. 
•  An embedded Matrix Math Accelerator is “expected to achieve” faster AI inference performance of 10X for FP32, 15X for BFloat16 floating point and 20X for Integer. AI inference is becoming central to modern data processing. If realized, the implications of these performance jumps are huge. 
•  Memory Inception, a new technology, allows clustered POWER10 systems to share direct access to each other’s memory. Thus “creating multi-Petabyte sized memory clusters” without any one system having an excessive amount of memory. Imagine the impact on memory-intensive apps like SAP, and the cost savings from avoiding “over-provisioning” to meet demand spikes.
• Security enhancements include “hardware memory encryption for end-to-end security and faster cryptography performance…additional AES encryption engine” meets “today's leading encryption standards” while “anticipating” future needs such as for quantum-safe encryption protocols.
• IBM POWER10 has more enhancements than we discuss here, e.g. hardware co-optimized Red Hat OpenShift for one. These are covered in IBM’s press release.

 Some Points to Ponder: A close reading of the press release reveals interesting information. IBM and Samsung collaborated to deliver this chip. As IBM sold its chip business to Global Foundries several years ago, Samsung Electronics will manufacture the chips.

 The press release clearly states ALL performance claims are based on “pre-Silicon”  engineering analysis of various environments. An indication to us that they come from theoretical, most likely computer-generated models. There are no measurements from functioning hardware. First system shipments are expected in the second half of 2021, i.e. 12 to 16 months from now. Most customers will not see a system until some time in 2022 when volume shipments will most likely occur. These dates (targets) are a long time away in this industry. Many things can and will change.

 Early announcement of new POWER systems is not surprising. IBM clearly expects to see newsworthy improvements in efficiency, performance, and capabilities.  Still, we look forward to substantive data from a real product before granting any rewards. Savvy readers will review the press release and form their own opinions about this situation and how it should factor into their plans and/or interest.

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[1] https://ptakassociates.blogspot.com/search?q=POWER9

[2] The Aug.17, 2020 press release can be found at:  https://tinyurl.com/yxs4hhqk. We recommend readers review the document. Comments are based on the version of the document as seen Aug. 20. We use some IBM terminology in this document.