PMS Information Systems

In today's IBM announcement for IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 6, IBM mentioned the following Statement of Direction: "IBM plans to expand the IBM Connections supported server platforms to include support of IBM i. Additional details will be forthcoming."

IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 6 (TR6) continues the drive toward additional performance, usability, and integration enhancements with operating system updates, IBM program products, and related offerings from IBM Software Group.

• DB2 for i provides enhancements for managing and monitoring the database, as well as improving performance and security.

• IBM i Licensed Internal Code now supports the new IBM Power 710, 720, 730, 740, 750, and 760 POWER7+ models using POWER7+ technology.

• Use of USB attached flash drives is now supported for both direct attach and iVirtualization configurations of IBM i, providing easy movement of data.

• IBM i Secure Sockets Layer has been enhanced to support the latest industry standards of Transport Layer Security version 1.2 (TLSv1.2) and Transport Layer Security version 1.1 (TLSv1.1) protocols.\

• IBM PowerHA SystemMirror for i (5770-HAS) now supports SAN Volume Controller (SVC), Storwize® V7000, and IBM Storwize V3700 with the addition of LUN (logical unit) switching capability, providing additional options for improving reliability and availability.

• The System Management tasks are simplified. The OnDemand Administration component of IBM Navigator for i has been included in IBM Content Manager OnDemand for i (5761-RD1 and 5770-RD1). IBM Content Manager OnDemand for i can be ordered through the Passport Advantage® ordering system.

• New function in the HMC, through provisioning of virtual I/O server partition, simplifies the initial setup steps and allows install of the partition using the HMC.

• Improved error detection in Systems Director Manager is extended to allow monitoring and management of detected errors on IBM i systems.

• IBM Mobile Database, announced October 2012, now supports DB2 for i with a mobile option for accessing data.

• Zend Server for IBM i Version 6 supports the development of mobile applications as well as providing capabilities for application awareness, auditing, and authentication.

I'm very pleased to share this great news with you.

Source - IBM

RPG IV Quiz 2

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFZjazNXUld3VWNXUzVUVXVfNmhWRkE6MQ

IBM Power 7+ Processor and Real Power Savings


Finally, the Power7+ chip has much more sophisticated control over the power consumed by the chip. For the first time, the IBM has put power gating on each core, allowing them to be shut down individually and in much more sophisticated ways.

The Power7+ chip has three different power modes. In nap mode, the clocks are stopped on a processor's core ex*****on units and all L2 and L3 cache segments are left running. This saves about 10 percent of the electricity that a Power7+ chip would burn, and it takes about 10 microseconds to fire up the cores and get them talking to the caches. During this nap mode, the caches are kept coherent across all of the cores in the system, whether they are local or remote. This is the same nap mode that the Power7 chip had.

With the Power7+, there are two more modes, one called deep sleep and the other called winkle, after Rip Van Winkle, of course. (Perhaps the Power7+ chip is code-named "Irving," after the author who penned that story about a man who fell asleep for twenty years and missed the American Revolution?) In deep sleep mode, the core is powered off and the L2 cache is flushed into L3 cache and it is shut down as well. The L3 cache is left running. This reduces the energy consumption of the core and associated L2 cache and L3 cache segment by 80 percent; the downside is that it required a re-initiation and a restore operation to wake the core module back up, and this takes around 4.5 milliseconds. (That's a long time in computer.) The winkle mode goes a bit further, flushing the L3 cache to the other seven L3 cache segments after emptying its L2 cache. The cores and the L2 cache and L3 cache segment are all power gated and turned completely off. This reduces the power consumption on the chiplet by 95 percent (you have to keep some things powered up so they know to turn the caches and cores back on), and it takes around 7 milliseconds to wake up from this winkle state and start doing useful work.

The energy savings that come through the deep sleep and winkle states are part of the reason IBM can crank the clocks on Power7+ chips, and it will be very interesting to see what kind of Turbo Core mode the Power7+ chips will have given all this. It may be possible to take a 16-core double-stuffer, turn off half the cores in each chip but leave the L3 caches on and get more powerful IBM i database engine. It will all depend on the feeds and speeds--and IBM i licensing--if such a thing makes sense. Throw in flash memory on the system board and you could so something truly interesting.

IBM Announcement:

July 2012: Technology preview announcement
A technology preview of IBM i Access Client Solutions (5733-XJ1) is available. IBM i Access Client Solutions is the newest member of the IBM i Access family of products. It provides a Java based, platform-independent interface that runs on most operating systems that support Java. It consolidates the most commonly used tasks for accessing your IBM i, including 5250 emulation, data transfer, a virtual control panel, 5250 emulation for LAN Console and more, into one simplified location.

IBM i Access for Windows delivers TCP/IP connectivity to users running a variety of Microsoft® Windows® operating systems. IBM i Access for Windows offers an all-inclusive client solution for accessing and using resources from your Windows desktop. It includes 5250 emulation, access to DB2 Universal Database® (UDB) for IBM i through its Data Transfer, and utilizes IBM i NetServer for working with the IBM i Integrated File System and printers. It also has a variety of middleware for using and developing client applications to access IBM i resources; and Navigator for i, the i5/OS GUI, for administering your IBM i.