Specialty engines

Specialty engines are processors that can help users expand the use of the mainframe for new workloads, while helping to lower cost of ownership. The IBM System z specialty engines can run independently or complement each other.

System z9 Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) System z10 Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) The IBM zIIP is available on the IBM System z10 Enterprise Class, IBM System z9 Enterprise Class, and IBM System z9 Business Class servers. The zIIP's execution environment will accept eligible work from z/OS, which will manage and direct the work between the general purpose processor and the zIIP.

System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) The IBM System z Application Assist Processors (zAAPs), available on IBM System z10 Enterprise Class, IBM System z9 Enterprise Class, IBM System z9 Business Class, IBM eServer zSeries 990 and IBM eServer zSeries 890 systems, are attractively priced specialized processing engines that provide a strategic z/OS Java™ execution and XML parsing environment.

Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) The Integrated Facility for Linux® (IFL) is a processor dedicated to Linux workloads. The attractively priced IFL processor allows you to purchase additional processing capacity for Linux workloads, without increasing IBM software charges for the existing System z environment. The IFL is available on all IBM System z10, IBM System z9 and IBM eServer zSeries servers.

System Assist Processor (SAP) The SAP is standard on IBM System z servers and is a dedicated I/O processor to help improve efficiencies and reduce the overhead of I/O processing of every IBM System z logical partition regardless of the operating system (z/OS, z/VM, Linux, z/VSE and z/TPF). For very high I/O intensive workloads, an additional one or more SAPs can be purchased (model dependent).