IBM manual z890 Performance Comparisons

z890 Performance Comparisons

The IBM z890 is the latest member of the zSeries family. The design of the z890 is a continuation of the major change in the direction of the zSeries platform started with the IBM ^zSeries 990. The implementation of the superscalar microprocessor provides for improvements in the performance of new workloads as well as maintain- ing excellent performance for traditional workloads. The z890 provides a lower capacity entry point as compared to the z800, an increase in total system capacity almost 2.1 times that of the z800 Model 004, doubling the number of CHPIDs, doubling the number of LPARs, quadrupling the number of HiperSockets, and increasing the number of ESCON channels by 75%, the number of FICON® channels by 25%, the number of ISC-3s by 100% and the number of OSA-Express Network connections by 67%. This server is designed to provide you with the ability to improve applica- tion performance, increase the number of users supported, support more transactions, increase scalability, and con- solidate workloads beyond what is available on a z800.

The performance design of the z/Architecture enables the entire server to support a new standard of perfor- mance for all applications through expanding upon a bal- anced system approach. As CMOS technology has been enhanced to support not only additional processing power, but also more engines, the entire server is modifi ed to sup- port the increase in processing power. The I/O subsystem supports a great amount of bandwidth through internal changes, thus providing for larger and quicker data move- ment into and out of the server. Support of larger amounts of data within the server required improved management of storage confi gurations made available through integra- tion of the software operating system and hardware sup- port of 64-bit addressing. The combined balanced system effect allows for increases in performance across a broad spectrum of work. However, due to the wide range of

performance levels, z890 offers from 1-4 Central Proces- sors each with 7 different “dial points” (28 choices in all) and resource management within the system, it is expected that there will be a large performance variability than has been previously seen by our traditional customer set. The z890 supports an estimated performance range of 0.14 to

7.40compared to a z800 Model 001. This variability may be observed in several ways. The range of performance rat- ings across the individual LSPR workloads is likely to have a larger spread than past processors. There will also be more performance variation of individual LPAR partitions as the impact of fl uctuating resource requirements of other parti- tions can be more pronounced with the increased number of partitions available on the z890. The customer impact of this increased variability will be seen as increased devia- tions of workloads from single-number-metric based factors such as MIPS, MSUs and CPU time chargeback algorithms. It is important to realize the z890 has been optimized to run many workloads at high utilization rates.

It is also important to notice that the LSPR workloads for z890 and z990 have been updated to refl ect more closely our customers’ current and growth workloads. The tradi- tional TSO LSPR workload is replaced by a new, heavy Java technology-based online workload referred to as Trade2-EJB (a stock trading application). The traditional CICS®/DB2® LSPR online workload has been updated to have a Web-frontend which then connects to CICS. This updated workload is referred to as WEB/CICS/DB2 and is representative of customers who Web-enable access to their legacy applications. Continuing in the LSPR for z890/ z990 will be the legacy online workload, IMS, and two legacy batch workloads CB84 and CBW2. The z890/ z990 LSPR will provide performance ratios for individual workloads as well as a “default mixed workload” which is used to establish single-number-metrics such as MIPS,

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