Thompson, Steve" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > I keep seeing references to the "mainframe" processor is slower than > those used in other platforms. > > Seriously, in an effort to compare processor power, IF one were to take > a COBOL program that would process 1000 records from a data base and > produce a report (let's say a payroll check register), which system > would process this in the least amount of elapsed time? >
You are mixing apples and oranges. The processor (which in this context means the MPU) speed has nothing to do with I/O. It has to do with pure computation. What you are talking about is a *system* level comparison, not a processor comparison. The mainframe MPU *is* slower than other platforms, but it doesn't matter because it doesn't handle the same kind of problems. IBM mainframes are generally faster with the workloads they handle because the I/O capabilities have traditionally been better than other platforms. Those other platforms are catching up, however. At some point, IBM will have to deal with that problem. I suspect that part of the reason IBM did not like the PSI solution is because it would have clearly highlighted this for certain workloads. Itanium likely could emulate zArch instructions faster than native zSeries systems can execute them, and a good system design may have actually provided much better performance than IBM would have liked. However, you will never see an actual processor comparison. If it actually would be favorable to IBM, it would have already released numbers to show that. IBM happily publishes processor benchmark numbers for POWER, Opteron, Xeon, and used to publish Itanium benchmarks as well. But *never* for mainframe processors. Just my opinion... Regards, Dean ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
