1. New z900 Turbos
2. CPU Chart Changes
3. Back Pain
1. New z900 Turbos
On April 30th, IBM announced their latest zSeries machines, the z900 Turbo series. (Announcement 102-123) There are 16 new processors that provide about a 20% improvement in speed over the original z900s. We’re now looking at about 300 MIPS for a single CP!
Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s TUNING Letter will receive the CPU Chart update containing the MIPS for the z900 Turbo soon. Electronic subscribers should receive an update today or tomorrow. Print subscribers will be sent an update in the mail. If you would like it sooner, please send an email to admin@watsonwalker.com containing your name, your company name, address, and a fax number.
The new processors are:
2. CPU Chart Changes
There are two more changes coming to the CPU Chart.
a. z800 Software Processor Groups
IBM used IMLC software pricing for the z800s when they were announced in February. They should have included actual processor group numbers, but may not have because they had no products left using processor groups. I’ve heard of at least one software vendor who has retained processor group prices for anything below 80 MSUs. So the groups shown below are all within the correct range. I’d like to know about any vendor who is still using these groups for pricing. Please send me an email if you know of any. Many thanks!
b. HDS Pilot Ratings
When IBM changed the LSPRs to include new OS/390 R10 ratios for more of the 9672 processors, I changed the MIPS ratings of those processors to correspond to the new ratios. I neglected to change the corresponding HDS processors. Since HDS has written guarantees that their machines will match the speed and capacity of IBM’s, I should have changed their MIPS ratings as well. So we’ll be making that update to the CPU Chart soon and will send you the updates.
3. Back Pain
Just a tip: I’ve had considerable luck with a book on back pain, The MindBody Prescription, by Dr. John Sarno. It’s based on the theory that a lot of back pain is stress-related (which I think mine is), and can be controlled by the mind.
Stay tuned!