The mainframe referenced in the article is from 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_z9 so it probably has significant computational power.

NASA just needs a bigger budget... http://gizmodo.com/5813257/air-conditioning-our-military-cos...

That figure is mostly the costs of running logistical chains in dangerous areas. It includes soldiers lost to attacks on convoys.

I doubt that less convoys will equal fewer attacks - it's just an accounting quirk that the casualties are apportioned to the fuel. The attacks might be less successful, as you won't be spreading the defence so thin, but you wouldn't get a linear reduction in costs.

The z9 comes with a minimum of 16GB of system ram, uses fibre channel drive interconnects, and has dozens of high-performance CPUs.

This is very much BIG iron, not ancient iron.

A Z9 can have up to 54 processors, but those processors are not identical - there are different ones optimized for, say, Java and relational database workloads.

The first mainframe I used, more than 25 years ago, had about a hundred 3278's connected to it. And it was still fast for interactive use when compared to the 8-bit computers of its day. This Z9 was probably commissioned after 2005.

Actually, the zIIP and zAAP processors for "accelerating" java or db2 workloads are identical to the other processors in terms of hardware; the underlying firmware just loads different microcode onto the chip to prevent it running a full Z/OS instance.

The difference is one of licensing -- IBM charges less for activating a core if you can only run java|db2|linux on it.

They may actually put an accelerator in the system at some point in the future, but for now it's just a way of using more processors without spending as much.

The specialty procs also tend to run at full speed where IBM usually caps the general processors. My workplace recently upgraded from two Z9's to two Z196's and the difference is astounding.

Massive differences in terms of capability, and reliability. Mainframe computing is not the same in comparison of clock cycles.

"Mainframe computing is not the same in comparison of clock cycles."

That's the thing everyone has forgotten.