IBM Session-1 IBM System z10 is a line of IBM mainframes. The System z10 represents the first model family powered by the z10 quad core processing engine. Its successors are the zEnterprise System models introduced in 2010 and 2012. The number of "characterizable" (or configurable) processing units (PUs) is indicated in the hardware model designation (e.g., the E26 has 26 characterizable PUs). Depending on the capacity model, a PU can be characterized as a Central Processor (CP), Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) processor, z Application Assist Processor (zAAP), z10 Integrated Information Processor (zIIP), or Internal Coupling Facility (ICF) processor. The System z10 supports the following IBM operating systems: z/OS, z/VSE, z/VM, and z/TPF The z10 is a microprocessor chip made by IBM for their System z10 mainframe computers, released February 26, 2008.[1] It was called "z6" during development.[2] The processor implements the CISC z/Architecture and has four cores. Each core has a 64 KB L1 instruction cache, a 128 KB L1 data cache and a 3 MB L2 cache (called the L1.5 cache by IBM). Finally, there is a 24 MB shared L3 cache (referred to as the L2 cache by IBM). A million service units (MSU) is a measurement of the amount of processing work a computer can perform in one hour. It reflects how IBM rates the machine in terms of charging capacity. The technical measure of processing power on IBM mainframes, however, are Service Units per second (or SU/sec). One “service unit” originally related to an actual hardware performance measurement (a specific model’s instruction performance). Most mainframe software vendors use a licensing and pricing model in which the customers are charged per MSU consumed (i.e. the number of operations the software has performed) in addition to hardware and software installation costs. Others charge by total MSU system capacity. Thus, while MSU is an artificial construction, it does have a direct financial implication. In fact, software charges are why the MSU measurement exists at all. CPU seconds is still often, used by programmers to measure performance and chargeback. The problem is that the work done by a zEC 12 machine in one CPU second is not the same as other mainframe computer models. One z12 CPU second is different from one z10 CPU second. So, IBM introduced a standard measure called Service Units (SU). SU’s and MSU’s are an ingenious way to measure mainframe capacity irrespective of theprocessor or the workload. IBM has published a table of SU_SEC SRM constants for every processor type. SU_SEC represents the amount of service units of work that can be processed in 1 second. E.g.: the SU_SEC rating for IBM z900 is 11,585. So, if a batch workload runs for 200 secs, it would consume 200 x 11,585 = 2,317,000 SU’s or 2.3 MSU’s. The total capacity of this box is 11,585 x 60 x 60 = 41,706,000 SU’s an hour or 41 MSU’s. Customer Information Control System (CICS) is a transaction server that runs primarily on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS and z/VSE. It is middleware designed to support rapid, high-volume online transaction processing. A CICS transaction is a unit of processing initiated by a single request that may affect one or more objects. This processing is usually interactive (screen-oriented), but background transactions are possible. Microcode is firmware (software that “lives” at a lower level than the operating system) that provides the actual hardware architecture customer programs expect. Advantages of microcoding include the ability to add new capabilities to existing hardware and also to fix incorrect operations without hardware changes. The S/360 line ranged from heavily microcoded machines at the low end to largely hardwired, high-end machines. All recent mainframes are microcoded; the Plug- Compatible Manufacturers (PCMs), including Amdahl and Hitachi, also used microcode, although Amdahl insisted on calling it “macrocode.” The existence of microcode is invisible to the user and to operations staff. On the latest IBM System z machines— the Business Class and Enterprise Class—microcode updates usually can be performed transparently without a system outage. ESCON (Enterprise Systems Connection) is a data connection created by IBM, and is commonly used to connect their mainframe computers to peripheral devices such as disk storage and tape drives. ESCON is an optical fibre, half-duplex, serial interface. It originally operated at a rate of 10 Mbyte/s, which was later increased to 17Mbyte/s. The current maximum distance is 43 kilometers. Optical fiber is smaller in diameter and weight, and hence could save installation costs. Space and labor could also be reduced when fewer physical links were required - due to ESCON's switching features. ESCON is being supplanted by the substantially faster FICON, which runs over Fibre Channel. ESCON allows the establishment and reconfiguration of channel connections dynamically, without having to take equipment off-line and manually move the cables. ESCON supports channel connections using serial transmission over a pair of fibres. It also allows the distance between units to be extended up to 60 km over a dedicated fiber. “Permanent virtual circuits” are supported through the switch. FICON (Fibre Connection) is the IBM proprietary name for the ANSI FC-SB-3 Single-Byte Command Code Sets-3 Mapping Protocol for Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. It is a FC layer 4 protocol used to map both IBM’s antecedent (either ESCON or parallel) channel-to-control-unit cabling infrastructure and protocol onto standard FC services and infrastructure. FICON uses two Fibre Channel exchanges for a channel - control unit connection—one for each direction. Each FICON channel port is capable of multiple concurrent data exchanges (a maximum of 32) in full duplex mode. Information for active exchanges is transferred in Fibre Channel sequences mapped as FICON Information Units (IUs) which consist of one to four Fibre Channel frames, only the first of which carries 32 bytes of FICON (FC-SB-3) mapping protocol. Each FICON exchange may transfer one or many such IUs. FICON channels use five classes of IUs to conduct information transfers between a channel and a control unit. They are: Data, Command, Status, Control, Command and Data, and lastly Link Control. Only a channel port may send Command or Command and Data IUs, while only a control unit port may send Status IUs. IBM DB2 is a family of database server products developed by IBM. These products all support the relational model, but in recent years some products have been extended to support object-relational features and non- relational structures, in particular XML. In IBM System z9 (and successor) mainframes, the System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) is a special purpose processor. It was initially introduced to relieve the general mainframe central processors (CPs) of specific DB2 processing loads, but currently is used to offload other z/OS workloads as described below. The idea originated with previous special purpose processors, the zAAP and IFL, which offload Java and Linux processing, respectively. A System z PU (processor unit) is "characterized" as one of these processor types, or as a CP (Central Processor), or SAP (Service Assist Processor). These processors do not contain microcode or hardware features that accelerate their designated workloads. Instead, by relieving the general CP of particular workloads, they often lead to a higher workload throughput at reduced license fees. DB2 for z/OS V8 was the first application to exploit the zIIP, but now there are several IBM and non-IBM products and technologies that exploit Ziip The IBM System z Application Assist Processors (zAAPs) is available on all IBM zEnterprise EC12, IBM zEnterprise, IBM System z10, and IBM System z9 servers. The zAAP specialty engine provides an attractively priced execution environment for web-based applications and SOA-based technologies, such as: • Java™ - for customers who desire the powerful integration advantages and traditional Qualities of Service of the IBM mainframe platform. • XML — for customers who desire cost effective XML parsing services on z/OS, z/OS XML System Services can exploit the zAAP for eligible XML workloads. When configured with general purpose processors within logical partitions running z/OS, zAAPs may help increase general purpose processor productivity and may contribute to lowering the overall cost of computing for z/OS Java technology-based applications. zAAPs are designed to operate asynchronously with the general processors to execute Java programming under control of the IBM Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This can help reduce the demands and capacity requirements on general purpose processors which may then be available for reallocation to other mainframe workloads. The amount of general purpose processor savings will vary based on the amount of Java application code executed by zAAP(s). This is dependent upon the amount of Java cycles used by the relevant application(s) and on the zAAP execution mode selected by the customer. use of zAAPs could reduce the number of TCP/IP programming stacks, firewalls, and physical interconnections (and their associated processing latencies) that might otherwise be required when the application servers and their database servers are deployed on separate physical server platforms. The Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) is a processor dedicated to Linux workloads on IBM System z servers. The IFL is supported by the z/VM virtualization and IBM Wave for z/VM software and the Linux operating system; it cannot run other IBM operating systems. The attractively priced IFL processor enables you to add processing capacity exclusively for Linux workloads. The fast speed of the IFL on the zEnterprise servers enables you to host more virtual servers per processor core than other server platforms.