John Summerfield wrote "I presume, from what you say, that Java isn't all that wonderful on zSeries? Improved CPU performance may make it so."
One cannot make such blanket statements. JAVA is a language, not a workload. Yes it does have characteristics that cause it to have long path lengths. However, it also has characteristics that trash caches, particularly if the programmer takes OO programming seriously. Small caches get trashed faster than large caches particularly when they are in fast engines. The balance of pathlength and cache misses is entirely dependent upon the application in any language. Java just happens to be less efficient on all fronts than earlier languages, but then Fortran is less efficient than assembler. I would argue that the slide in code efficiency is balanced by the increase in processor speed over time for all machines. Relative capacity is more related to how the programmer writes the application and how much compute v data is involved. Long ago we used to call the ratio of "Execution to Bandwidth" the E/B ratio. This ratio still applies, when E/B is large the other machines will look better than z. When it is small the z shines. This is true regardless of language. Joe Temple [EMAIL PROTECTED] 845-435-6301 295/6301 cell 914-706-5211 home 845-338-8794
