IBM Telum
{{Short description|2021 64-bit mainframe microprocessor by IBM}}
{{Infobox CPU
| name = Telum
| produced-start = 2021
| produced-end =
| slowest = 5.2
| slow-unit = GHz
| fastest =
| fast-unit = GHz
| predecessor = z15
| successor = Telum II
| size-from = 7 nm
| size-to =
| designfirm = IBM
| manuf1 = Samsung Electronics
| arch = z/Architecture
| microarch =
| numcores = 8
| l1cache =
| l2cache = 32 MB
per core
| l3cache =
}}
Telum is a microprocessor made by IBM for the IBM z16 series mainframe computers. The processor was announced at the Hot Chips 2021 conference on 23 August 2021. Telum is IBM's first processor that contains on-chip acceleration for artificial intelligence inferencing while a transaction is taking place.{{clarification needed|date=December 2024}}
Description
{{advert section|date=December 2024}}
The chip contains 8 processor cores with a deep superscalar out-of-order pipeline, running with more than 5 GHz clock frequency which is optimized for the demands of heterogenous enterprise-class workloads (e.g: finance, security sensitive applications, applications requiring extreme reliability). The cache and chip-interconnection infrastructure provides 32 MB cache per core and can scale to 32 Telum chips. The cache design has been described as "revolutionary" in 2021, by creating a system where the L2 cache of one core can be used as virtual L3 and L4 caches for another core. The Telum processor can either be water cooled or air cooled, but water cooling is required for running more than a few Telum processors in a single IBM compute drawer.{{cite book |url=https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg248950.pdf |title=IBM z16 Technical Introduction |edition=Second |publisher=IBM |id=SG24-8950-01 |date=April 2023}}{{Citation |title=Why Do Mainframes Still Exist? What's Inside One? 40TB, 200+ Cores, AI, and more! | date=28 October 2023 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouAG4vXFORc |access-date=2024-01-11 |language=en}} Unlike other processors, the IBM Telum does not thermal throttle by reducing clock speed; instead it inserts sleep state instructions.
Telum adds a new, NNP-Data-Type-1 Format, 16-bit floating point format and several new instructions. The Neural Network Processing Assists (NNPA){{cite book
| title = z/Architecture Principles of Operation
| id = SA22-7832-13
| date = May 2022
| edition = Fourteenth
| section = NEURAL NETWORK PROCESSING ASSIST
| section-url = https://www.vm.ibm.com/library/other/22783213.pdf#page=1795
| pages = 26-61-26-96
| ref = {{sfnref|z}}
| url = https://www.vm.ibm.com/library/other/22783213.pdf
| publisher = IBM
| access-date = March 31, 2025
}}
instruction performs a variety of tensor instructions useful for neural networks.
See also
References
{{reflist|refs=
{{Cite news |last=Moorhead |first=Patrick |title=IBM Telum- A New Chapter In Vertically Integrated Chip Technology |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2021/08/23/ibm-telum--a-new-chapter-in-vertically-integrated-chip-technology/ |access-date=12 May 2023 |date=23 August 2021 |website=Forbes |language=en}}
{{Cite web |last=Combs |first=Veronica |date=24 August 2021 |title=IBM's new Telum Processor is the company's first with an on-chip AI accelerator |url=https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ibms-new-telum-processor-is-the-companys-first-with-an-on-chip-ai-accelerator/ |access-date=27 August 2021 |website=TechRepublic |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230322173717/https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ibms-new-telum-processor-is-the-companys-first-with-an-on-chip-ai-accelerator/ |archive-date=2023-03-22 |url-status=dead}}
{{Cite news |last=Cutress |first=Ian |title=Did IBM Just Preview The Future of Caches? |url=https://www.anandtech.com/show/16924/did-ibm-just-preview-the-future-of-caches |access-date=5 May 2022 |date=2 September 2021 |website=Anandtech}}
{{cite news |last1=Johnson |first1=Dexter |title=IBM's New Telum Chip Reboots the Mainframe |url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/mainframe-ibm-z16-telum |access-date=5 May 2022 |work=IEEE Spectrum |date=29 April 2022 |language=en}}
{{cite web |last1=Sebastian |first1=Linus |title=I Tried to Break a Million Dollar Computer - IBM Z16 Facility Tour! |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDtaanCENbc |website=YouTube |publisher=Linus Media Group |access-date=5 May 2022 |language=en |format=video |date=5 April 2022}}
{{cite news |last1=Hudson |first1=Andrew |title=The IBM mainframe: How it runs and why it survives |url=https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/the-ibm-mainframe-how-it-runs-and-why-it-survives/ |access-date=25 July 2023 |work=Ars Technica |date=24 July 2023 |language=en-us}}
}}