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Bridgestone buys top-end IBM servers

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Stephen Shankland principal writer
Stephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and writes about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
Expertise processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science Credentials
  • I've been covering the technology industry for 24 years and was a science writer for five years before that. I've got deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and other dee
Stephen Shankland
Bridgestone, the largest tire manufacturer, has purchased from IBM three top-end z900 mainframes and 23 eight-processor x440 Intel servers running Windows. Bridgestone also is using IBM's DB2 database software.

The z900 machines, which often cost more than $1 million and lead to annual support revenue for IBM, are linked into a "Sysplex" configuration that effectively unites them into a single server, IBM said. Mainframes once had been given up for dead, but IBM has experienced resurgent sales of the systems, which are better able at doing multiple jobs at once and withstanding hardware and software problems than most other machines.