IBM z16: Quantum-Safe system with Real-time AI for transaction processing at scale

IBM launched z16, a next-generation system with an on-chip AI accelerator that delivers latency-optimized inferencing. This  will allow clients to monitor real-time transactions at scale for mission-critical workloads including credit card, healthcare, and financial transactions. It is specifically designed to assist protect against near-future threats that could be used to crack today's encryption systems, building on IBM's heritage of security leadership. 

Real-time enterprise AI to revolutionize industries with new use cases and applications

Financial institutions around the world are grappling with the effects of fraud on their revenues and customer interactions. According to the "2022 IBM Global Financial Fraud Impact Report" by IBM and Morning Consult, credit card fraud is the most common sort of fraud among consumers in the seven nations evaluated.

Furthermore, respondents believe that banks and payment networks should bear the brunt of the responsibility for fraud prevention. However, due to latency concerns, running deep-learning models at scale in real-time is not practicable, which means fraud detection models are only run on less than 10% of high-volume transactions, resulting in a considerable amount of fraud going undetected.

The IBM z16 combines AI inferencing with the extremely secure and reliable high-volume transaction processing IBM is recognised for, thanks to its IBM Telum Processor. Banks can now detect fraud during transactions on a vast scale for the first time: the IBM z16 can handle 300 billion inference queries per day with a latency of just one millisecond<3>. For consumers, this might mean less time and effort spent dealing with fraudulent credit card transactions. For both businesses and card issuers, this might mean a reduction in revenue loss as customers avoid the annoyance of incorrect declines, which may lead them to use alternative cards in the future.

Securing data with the industry’s first quantum-safe system

It's vital to protect against today's dangers and posture against cyber thieves who may be taking data now for later decryption in a hybrid cloud system that includes on-premises and public cloud services. Building on IBM technologies such as Pervasive Encryption and Confidential Computing, the IBM z16 takes cyber resiliency to the next level by safeguarding data against future threats that may emerge as quantum computing evolves.

The IBM z16 is built on lattice-based encryption, an approach for designing security primitives that helps safeguard data and systems from existing and future threats. It is the industry's first quantum-safe system<4>. Businesses can future-proof their apps and data today with IBM z16 quantum-safe cryptography.

IBM z16 clients may improve their cyber resilience posture and keep control of their systems with secure boot (which means bad actors can't implant malware into the boot process to gain control of the system at startup). In addition, the Crypto Express 8S (CEX8S) hardware security module will provide clients with both classical and quantum-safe cryptographic technologies to assist them handle use cases that need information confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation. Clients can use IBM z16's secure boot and quantum-safe cryptography to counter potential quantum-computing threats including harvest now, decrypt later assaults, which can lead to extortion, intellectual property theft, and the revelation of other sensitive data.

Modernizing for hybrid cloud

IBM has spent the last three years investing heavily in open-source technology on the IBM zSystems platform and building an unified developer experience throughout the hybrid cloud. These solutions are designed to let our clients leverage their existing IT infrastructure, clouds, and applications in a seamless manner, while offering them the flexibility to run, build, manage, and modernise cloud native workloads on their preferred architecture.