Using IBM z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP)

An IBM® z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) is a dedicated processor designed to operate asynchronously with the general processors in an IBM Z® system to help improve utilization of computing capacity and control costs. A zIIP is designed for select data (database), cloud, and transaction (Java™) processing workloads.

zIIPs allow users to leverage additional processing power for new applications without affecting their total million service units (MSU) rating or machine model designation. Benefits of having zIIPs: When running standard CPs on a server, there are a wide variety of speeds or MSU ratings available. The zIIPs, however, always run at full speed.

When workload is dispatched onto a zIIP, the processing cycles that are used do not contribute to the MSU count and therefore do not impact software usage charges. This makes adding new applications to the IBM Z platform extremely cost-effective especially compared to competing platforms such as distributed systems or public cloud.

While zIIP exploitation for individual workloads may vary, hardware configuration updates to allocate zIIPs are minimal. Additionally, zIIP usage is transparent to the applications; no changes are needed within the application to run zIIP-eligible work.

For more information, see IBM z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP).