Humbly suggesting a change in subject from: "Why is zSeries so CPU poor?"
to: "Why is z/Architecture different?" to which the basic answer is: "Different design objectives. z/Architecture is for general purpose business and governmental computing. Intense focus on transaction processing, information management, and huge volumes of mixed workload (fastest context switching, extreme I/O performance, huge and unique cache design, scores of assist processors, specialty engines, Parallel Sysplex, etc.) Best-in-the-world qualities of service (reliability, availability, security, scalability, etc.) and maniacal commitment to backward (and even forward) compatibility. Respectable mathematical processing performance. Financial promise is lowest TCO but not necessarily lowest acquisition price. Redoubled emphasis on openness, ease-of-use, wide range of competitive software choices, and thorough embrace of industry standards (Linux, Java, J2EE, Web services, XML, TLS/SSL, PKI, LDAP, DNS, CIFS/SMB, NFS, etc.) -- i.e. general purpose, not single purpose. Continued huge investments in research and development to keep driving these design objectives ever forward (i.e. never coasting)." My words, not IBM's, but that's probably pretty close to the mark. I'm not exactly sure why some people (not here) have trouble with this one. All motor vehicles are not subcompact cars nor single engine piston airplanes, as an analogy. With different architectural objectives you get different designs. If you're creating the next Shrek film (digital cinematography), simulating nuclear explosions, folding proteins, modeling aeronautical designs, calculating Pi to a new record decimal place, searching for extraterrestrial radio signals, or you otherwise need raw mathematical performance without the highest qualities of service, then z/Architecture is probably not for you (on a total cost basis anyway). Otherwise, and if you're at least some very minimum size (such as the 50 employee online gaming mainframe customer in Brazil), z/Architecture is probably something you need, maybe/probably even very badly. - - - - - Timothy F. Sipples Consulting Enterprise Software Architect, z9/zSeries Tokyo (Serving IBM Japan and IBM Asia-Pacific) E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
