When Linux started on the s390 over 3 years ago, a lot
of work was done to see what Linux on the mainframe
was good for. But that was with lower levels of linux
(2.2.16, 2.4.7) and slower machines (mp2000, mp3000,
g5,g6). Now that Trex is GA, has anyone gone back and
re-examined the mythology?

- Is Trex capable of a wider range of applications,
with more cpu intensive workloads?
- How well do the current kernels (2.4.21 - RHEL3 or
SLES8 SP3) scale, both in cpu workloads and I/O
workloads.
- One of the presentations I noticed from IBM Germany
inidicated that a few Linux were better than many
linux and a single linux. It turns out the single
linux was limited by memory. How does 64bit affect
linux performance if given a "lot" of memory.

The reasons I speculate is our old friend - bogomips.

For various s/390-zSeries processers, they run
something like this (SLES8 SP2, 2.4.19 kernel, except
for mp2000 at SLES7).

mp2000 - less than 200 bogomips
9672-zz7 (g6) 630 bogomips
2064-116 (z1) 820 bogomips
2084-b16 (Trexx GA1) 2400 bogomips!

The speed of the top of the line zSeries has increased
at four fold in the last 3-4 years.

It seems that the literature is lagging what is now
available in the field. Is zSeries more competitive
now  against other platforms than it was four years
ago?

(caution: my 1749 MHZ intel registers 3538 bogomips,
for whatever that is worth).


=====
Jim Sibley
Implementor of Linux on zSeries in the beautiful Silicon Valley

"Computer are useless.They can only give answers." Pablo Picasso

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