STILL ERECTING MALLET COMPOUNDS. They worked for Norfolk and Western almost to the end of the Steam Era, and their electronic counterpart has its own kind of tractive effort.

IBM Corp. rolls out a new mainframe computer Tuesday boasting a 50 percent performance boost and dramatically lower energy costs than its predecessor.

The new System z10, with a starting price at about $1 million, comes as IBM focuses on lowering the price tag for running its storied line of data-crunching workhorses.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based company said it designed the new machine to help companies and government agencies that rely on mainframes - usually for critical data processing such as bank transactions or census statistics crunching - save money on energy bills and better handle a flood of Internet information.

The size of IBM's investment - the company spent five years and $1.5 billion developing the new mainframe - also underscores its commitment to the long-term viability of the mainframe and efforts continue adapting the decades-old product line to the Internet age.

The principle of one unit doing the work of many applies as well.

The z10's capacity is equivalent to 1,500 servers based on the popular x86 design, IBM says, though it has 85 percent lower energy costs and takes up 85 percent less space than the batch of x86 servers.

Does that mean another generation of students has to learn Job Control Language? I grew up in a Univac environment and those // and /* commands look clunky. Or does the Z10 have Heuristic Algorithmic capabilities?