Mainframes have been around for a long time but they’re not out just yet. And IBM, which has a huge chunk of the market thanks to its more modernized System z line-up, is getting ready to unveil zNext, a new generation chip that will pack a lot more juice.

The Register picked up the date of an online webcast featuring a few mainframe partners and customers on August 28. The date coincides with an IBM keynote during the Hot Chips 24 conference in which company representatives will be discussing zNext and the eight-core Power7+ processors, another upcoming product.

zNext offers a maximum clock rate of  5.5GHz while the Power7+  – the follow-up to the  4.14 Ghz Power7  CPU already out on the market – will offer slightly less than that with a lead of  20 percent over its widely-implemented predecessor.

Here’s a bit of speculations about what customers can expect to see with the new chip:

“IBM will no doubt add a bunch of new features to the zNext chip as it shrinks from the 45 nanometer processes used in the z11 processors to the 32 nanometer processes used to etch the zNext chips. It stands to reason that IBM will be goosing the on-chip embedded DRAM L3 cache memory in the zNext processors. The z11 chip has 24MB of L3 cache, and IBM could easily double it if it doesn’t mind having a large and hot processor.”

Over in the consumer space the chip makers are really starting to pay attention to is mobile. Smartphones and tablets are seeing consistent growth in demand internationally while the PC market is proving to be increasingly volatile, and vendors are reacting. HP and Dell are ramping up their higher-margin enterprise businesses, while Samsung and Intel are investing billions in optimizing their products for mobile apps.