IT Masala

IBM on Thursday said it's building a specialized-version of the mainframe that would incorporate the Cell processor used in Sony's PlayStation 3 videogame console. The new computer is designed to power 3-D virtual environments for online gaming, business collaboration, mapping, and other applications requiring intensive data processing.

The project, which includes the help of Brazilian online game company Hoplon Infotainment, is meant to develop a new, and potentially lucrative, use for the mainframe, which has traditionally been used in banking, manufacturing, and other industries that need to process hundreds, if not thousands, of transactions a second.

The mainframe is an ideal platform for virtual environments, particularly online gaming, because of its ability to run multiple processors for computing-intensive applications, while also handling millions of simultaneous users, according to IBM. "As online environments increasingly incorporate aspects of virtual reality — including 3-D graphics and lifelike, meaningful real-time interaction among many simultaneous users — companies of all types will need a computing platform that can handle a broad spectrum of demanding performance and security requirements," Jim Stallings, general manager for IBM System z, said in a statement.

via [ IW ]

Note : Remember , somebody sometime ago had said " Mainframes are dead " — anybody remembers ??  The person who said it might not have even thought of utilizing the power of Mainframes upto this extent ..anyway .. Long Live IBM ..Long Live Mainframes.