## 1.1 LinuxONE architecture and hardware 

LinuxONE can be configured to isolate or share data at different levels. Isolation can occur at the application, operating system, and hypervisor levels. 

The option to fully encrypt data is available by using dedicated cryptographic processors. These cryptographic processors are in addition to the standard processing units that process the applications. This configuration helps gain valuable performance throughput by offloading the encryption tasks onto these specialized cryptographic processors. 

The architecture must allow for changes in hardware and software to continue meeting rapidly changing needs. If the hardware and software components reach functional saturation, the architecture must expand (not change) to allow the hardware and software to grow and still be compatible with previous iterations and deployments. LinuxONE is founded on a solid and proven architecture. 

This section describes the LinuxONE architecture, hardware, and its characteristics. 

## 1.2 LinuxONE architecture 

The LinuxONE family features the world’s fastest commercially available processor. Built for speed, the platform supports simultaneous multithreading for Linux and Java workloads. It also helps deliver outstanding transaction processing and data serving performance. 

IBM engineered LinuxONE as a highly scalable data-serving and transaction-processing platform that is vastly different from a standard x86-based server that runs Linux. In contrast, LinuxONE combines the enterprise qualities of the IBM hardware platforms with the openness of Linux and open source software. 

LinuxONE is a mission-critical hardware platform with a unique shared memory and vertical scaling architecture. Dedicated Power and RAS cores in I/O channels and SAPs for I/O orchestration enable the platform to handle heavy I/O without compromising on latency and service millions of transactions per second. 

## Open-source Linux-Based software stack 

LinuxONE’s hardened Linux-based software stack can run most open source software packages, such as databases and data management (for example, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Apache Spark), virtualization platforms, containers (for example, IBM z/VM, KVM, and Docker), automation and orchestration software (for example, OpenStack, Puppet, Node.js, Juju, and Chef), and compute-intensive workloads, such as blockchain. In addition, LinuxONE Systems makes easy to build, model, deploy, and manage enterprise-grade scale-out clusters and scalable cloud architectures. 

