Administrator > Performance

IBM TPF and z/TPF

Transaction Processing Facility (TPF) is IBMs specialized System 390 (S/390) and zSeries OS and transaction processor for high-end, -volume and -bandwidth computing. Originally the result of an early 1960s project between IBM and several airlines, TPF has been continually enhanced and remains at the core of a majority of the worlds airline reservations systems. Designed for these demanding operational requirements, TPF is optimized for large-scale computing, taking advantage of the zSeries familys memory and I/O management capabilities.

 

TPF is most appropriate for the enterprise whose business model justifies investment in a processing complex optimized to operate at the lowest possible cost per transaction. Today, TPF is installed in various industries, including travel, finance and the public sector. More than 90 percent of all airlines reservations and 90 percent of all credit-card authorizations are processed using TPF. 

 

IBM z/TPF

In October 2004, IBM announced z/TPF, which is scheduled to become generally available in September 2005. As the next generation of on demand transaction processing, z/TPF has been developed on the IBM TPF V4.1 architecture, which is currently in use worldwide. z/TPF is well suited to business computing environments that require: 

 

        High-volume transaction management-z/TPF can process tens of thousands of transactions per second from hundreds of thousands of end users. Additionally, a z/TPF loosely coupled complex (a single 30 TB database-clustering solution) can scale up to as many as 32 zSeries servers. 

 

        High reliability and availability-Downtime of mission-critical applications can effect losses of millions of dollars an hour from lost revenue, customer dissatisfaction and negative publicity. 

 

        Fast response time-z/TPF is designed to provide fast and consistent response time across processing peaks, even when the server is in excess of 90-percent utilization. 

 

        Low cost-z/TPF offers a low cost per transaction for high-volume, real-time transactions. Price performance is enhanced as servers can be fully utilized without sacrificing end-user quality of service (QoS). This capability alone represents a competitive advantage for delivery of business services in the marketplace. 

 

        Efficiency-z/TPF supports the IBM 64-bit architecture with 64-bit addressing, enabling large-scale memory spaces for applications and memory tables. 

 

        Open-development environment-z/TPF also uses the GNU tool chain and can share applications, tooling and development infrastructure (including C/C++) with Linux. In fact, z/TPF uses Linux as its build environment.

 

 

Next page: >>