Here is the deal. Here is why the ABO. I am going to do this without reference to materials, and some of the details are NDA anyway, but let me give this a very general shot.
For years IBM was able to sell new boxes by saying "Mr. CIO, your batch window is shrinking? No problem, buy our new mainframe and all your COBOL will run 30% faster." (Gross oversimplification, but bear with me.) Now CMOS is no longer getting any faster. Not Z CMOS, not Intel CMOS. Barring an outside the box breakthrough that is not expected, CMOS is not going to get 30% faster. Look back at the mainframe model performance numbers. Each box is 30 to 100% faster than the one that came before ... until roughly the z12. They aren't getting significantly faster anymore. So you can't sell mainframes with "your COBOL will automatically run faster." Now, in a sense, mainframes ARE getting faster. More cache. Higher real memory limits and for Z, dramatically lowered memory prices. That processor multi-threading thing. But especially, new instructions that are inherently faster than the old way of doing things. Load and store on condition are the i-cache's dream instructions! Lots and lots of new "faster way to do things" instructions on the z12 and z13. But in order to take advantage of those new instructions, two things have to happen: (a.) IBM had to release a dramatically improved COBOL compiler (they did) and (b.) Mr. CIO has to recompile everything. But Mr. CIO has either lost the source code, or does not know if his source code corresponds to his production loadlibs, or Mr. CIO has laid off all the programmers and there is no one to re-compile and re-test. Enter the ABO ... Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Shane Ginnane Sent: Monday, November 30, 2015 3:34 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: IBM Automatic (COBOL) Binary Optimizer Now Availabile On Mon, 30 Nov 2015 22:43:37 +0000, Gibney, David Allen,Jr wrote: >And it doesn't stick you with the requirement for the loadlib to be PDS/E... ;0) I wonder if this hasn't been such an impediment to V5 take-up that it enabled a business case to be built to release the ABO. So, what could possibly be the basis of the funding for this - maybe a future enforcing of a "ABO or latest version" policy so that the compiler folks can issue a restricted support statement like BCP ?. Cynical ??? ... me ??? Shane ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
