SCB's Chips: Mainframe Dreams 1 NOTE: CLICK THE "READ MORE" BUTTON BELOW TO VIEW THE WHOLE POST. INCLUDED ARE LINKS TO RESOURCES ASSOCIATED WITH THIS UPLOAD AS WELL AS A DIRECT REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE IN OBTAINING PROCESSOR CHIPS AND MODULES LIKE THE ONE DEPICTED HERE. PLEASE ENJOY. :-) Hi all, I'm back with a new piece of art to share with you. It is the next in my SCB's Chips series and this one is the first mainframe computer CPU I have drawn and colored. This module is an actual real processor unit and is used in IBM's System z9 enterprise mainframe computer, a very large system introduced back in 2005 for use as a business mainframe and high-performance enterprise server processor. For those of you who are unfamiliar with mainframe computers, these are very large and powerful computers used by large businesses and the government to handle large quantities of data. They feature lots of redundant and parallel processor, memory and storage elements for enhanced data reliability, security and system stability. As such, these things are designed to be plugged in, booted up and run continuously for weeks, months or even years without ever shutting down. The high redundancy ensures that data stored on them are constantly available and modern mainframe systems are highly fault-tolerant. Put simply, a mainframe can take a licking and keep on ticking :-). This particular processor module drawing was inspired by a video I saw recently on the YouTube channel "Play with Junk" (a good channel to check out if you are into equipment teardowns like I am) as well as a variety of photographs I have amassed over the years of things like this. Links to my sources and resources will be included below. A brief description of each chip's function on this module is as follows... Upper left and lower left chips: These are the Memory Storage Controller chips. These, I presume, are the chips responsible for controlling and managing the interface between the processors and the memory ...
