I/O Connectivity

Today, businesses are facing intensified challenges economically, socially, and from the competition. In this time of rapid change, organizations need to lay a foundation that will not only address these challenges but also pave the way for new business opportunities and growth.

New expectations are being set for breakthrough innovation, accelerated value creation, and increased throughput. In order to achieve these objectives, it is time to start thinking differently about infrastructure. That is why IBM has developed a strategy for a Dynamic Infrastructure that will help organizations address higher service expectations, rising cost pressures, as well as new risks and threats. It also lays a foundation for dramatic increases in productivity and the increased flexibility needed to achieve the faster pace demanded by a smarter planet.

At the heart of a Dynamic Infrastructure is the need to get to data fast and scale with business demands and growth. The new generation of FICON - FICON Express8 - is designed to provide faster access to data with a link rate of 8 gigabits per second (Gbps) and the ability to autonegotiate to 2 or 4 Gbps, offering investment protection for existing infrastructures - servers, switches, directors, storage devices, printers. With its performance improvements, FICON Express8 may also provide opportunities for growth of your FICON infrastructure when you are limited by availability of I/O slots. You may be able to "do more with less."

The FICON Express8 features support High Performance FICON for System z (zHPF) which was introduced in October 2008 on the System z10 servers. zHPF is an extension to the FICON architecture and is designed to improve the execution of small block I/O requests. zHPF streamlines the FICON architecture and reduces the overhead on the channel processors, control unit ports, switch ports, and links by improving the way channel programs are written and processed. For more information on recent System z10 I/O enhancements see What’s New.