IBM To Transition Their z/OS, POWER + AIX Compilers To Being LLVM/Clang-Based

[wizard69]

Is there any reason for IBM to continue pursuing z/OS and AIX other than supporting existing customers?

Isn’t that pretty much what IBM is all about - Supporting customers -

I wish IBM would abandon z/OS and AIX in favor of focusing their everything on Linux.

As much as I like Linux I would hate to see a world where other commercial and hobby OS’s didn’t exist. In fact one of the things I find hideous is the IT mono culture we see in many corporations. Personally I’d rather see IBM concentrate on “cross platform”.

[edwaleni]

Personally I’d rather see IBM concentrate on “cross platform”.

What IBM product sold today can't run Java? What IBM product can't run a container? Not sure what you mean by cross platform today.

Other than the Q Series (quantum computing), the Z, I and P all run some form of POWER.

[uid313]

As much as I like Linux I would hate to see a world where other commercial and hobby OS’s didn’t exist. In fact one of the things I find hideous is the IT mono culture we see in many corporations. Personally I’d rather see IBM concentrate on “cross platform”.

In that case I would rather see AIX become open source.
Linux is a commercial operating system with vendors such as Red Hat, Canonical and SUSE.
We have other operating systems and hobbyist systems such as DragonFly BSD and Haiku.

[uid313]

Isn't that a pretty big reason? As long as those business units continue operating at a handsome profit, why should they abandon them?

To have all their developers focus on one platform instead of having them develop multiple platforms and systems at the same time. It is redundant and a waste of resources. Imagine if IBM put all those developers focusing on Linux.

[uid313]

Because there are still use cases where z/OS is superior to Linux.

I was not aware of this. What use cases are these?

[Ironmask]

To have all their developers focus on one platform instead of having them develop multiple platforms and systems at the same time. It is redundant and a waste of resources. Imagine if IBM put all those developers focusing on Linux.

Who's going to pay those billions (trillions?) of dollars to all of their customers to rewrite all of their software and infrastructure, replace their hardware, train existing and new employees and restructure their workforce?
You sound like a child. Are you a web developer by chance?

[Space Heater]

the Z, I and P all run some form of POWER.

IBM's z-series mainframes do not use the POWER ISA, and the microarchitecture is different between z and POWER as well (beyond just the decoder).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/Architecture

[uid313]

Who's going to pay those billions (trillions?) of dollars to all of their customers to rewrite all of their software and infrastructure, replace their hardware, train existing and new employees and restructure their workforce?
You sound like a child. Are you a web developer by chance?

I don't think anyone is trained in z/OS or AIX. It probably runs some software that can be ported to Linux.
AIX is a UNIX, and so is Linux, so the applications should be rather portable. Linux runs on all hardware, so I don't think you need to replace any infrastructure or hardware or train anyone.

[FireBurn]

As someone who is trained in z/OS I doubt it'll be migrated. It's not a UNIX, it's barely recognisable in comparison to anything modern

[starshipeleven]

Because there are still use cases where z/OS is superior to Linux.

Could you make some examples? I'm curious, I don't know much of z/OS.