Interviewing IBM's Christian Zoellin and Christian Jacobi
IBM engineers discuss the development of the next-generation z/Architecture mainframe, which features a unique dual-ISA design supporting both z/Architecture and Arm instruction sets. The design integrates specialized decoders into the core to handle both architectures efficiently.
Why it matters
This innovation represents a significant shift in mainframe architecture, potentially bridging the gap between legacy enterprise systems and modern ARM-based computing environments.
Hello you fine Internet folks, Today we're at Hot Chips 2026! We join IBM to talk about their just revealed Dual-ISA z/ architecture + ARM design with Christian Zoellin, the Core Design Team Leader and Christian Jacobi, the CTO of Systems Development! Hope y’all enjoy!
The transcript below has been edited for conciseness and readability.
George Cozma: Hello, you fine internet folks. We’re here at Stanford during Hot Chips 2026. And the very first Hot Chips presentation this year was from IBM, talking about their next-generation z/Architecture, along with the really, really cool thing that they did there, which we’ll get to in a second. But I have two folks from IBM here. If you’d like to introduce yourselves.
Christian Jacobi: Hey, I’m Christian Jacobi. I’m an IBM Fellow and the CTO for Systems Development.
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