AI and Analytics

Hi again,

given that we've established a Coupling Facility (CF) is mandatory for the AI Framework on z/OS 3.1 that the AI-powered WLM batch initiators require, I was wondering if there's any AI I can do on z/OS 3.1 that doesn't use a CF.

It would be good to have some sort of entry point for AI on z/OS that avoids a CF, but if there's none, so be it.  I was thinking that perhaps the open-source AI libraries of some kind might work without a CF, but I'm not an expert on those (nor indeed any AI).

Kind regards,
Peter

Hi Peter, 

I asked around regarding the coupling facility requirement, and found out that the CF can be an internal CF (just another LPAR partition in the z box) and can use a GP engine instead of an ICF engine.  So, no additional hardware is necessary.

Regarding the topic of this thread post, there are quite a lot of AI solutions on IBM Z which don't require a coupling facility. Please take a look at the graphic below which displays some of these solutions. 

IBM has invested into getting leading open-source AI frameworks and solutions running on the platform. Please see this blog post here which details an open-source offering IBM recently announced. 

Let me know if you have any questions. 

Thanks Artem, very helpful.

In the graphic above, I see at the bottom, WMLz, which not only requires a CF but also 4 zIIPs and 100GB of memory according to z/OS v3.1 Content Solution I downloaded from this page https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/3.1.0?topic=z-content-solutions 

That's quite a lot of capacity, admittedly to lay the foundation for future use cases beyond the one available now in the form of AI-powered WLM batch initiators, but a big step just to get going nonetheless.

Even using GPs for a CF is quite a step, as of course the capacity used by the CF is no longer available for z/OS, in both GPs and memory.

I'm going to dig a bit deeper into Cloud Pak for Data in the hope that there is not such a significant hardware requirement as is the case for WMLz.

Thanks again for your input!