IBM System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP)

What it does

The IBM System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) is available on all IBM zEnterprise (zEnterprise™), System z10, and System z9 servers. It is designed to help free-up general computing capacity and lower overall total cost of computing for select data and transaction processing workloads for business intelligence (BI), ERP and CRM, and select network encryption workloads on the mainframe.

Eligible workloads include portions of the following:

• DB2 for z/OS V8, DB2 9 and DB2 10 for z/OS exploit the zIIP capability for portions of eligible data serving, pureXML, and utility workloads.
• z/OS Communications Server exploits the zIIP for portions of IPSec network encryption and decryption workloads.
• z/OS XML System Services is enabled to take of the zIIP for eligible XML validating and non-validating workloads.
• z/OS Global Mirror (zGM, formerly XRC Extended Remote Copy) enables DFSMS SDM (System Data Mover) processing to be eligible for the zIIP
• z/OS Communications Server exploits the zIIP for select HiperSockets large message traffic
• IBM Global Business Services can enable the Scalable Architecture for Financial Reporting (SAFR) enterprise business intelligence reporting solution for zIIP.
• Intra-server communications – portions of z/OS CIM Server processing are eligible for zIIP (with z/OS V1.11).
• Tivoli OMEGAMON XE on z/OS for DASD scanning
• OMEGAMON XE for DB2 Performance Expert (and DB2 Performance Monitor) for normalizing DB2 for z/OS raw instrumentation data.
• zAAP on zIIP capability - Optimize the purchase of a new zIIP or maximize your investment in existing zIIPs by enabling zAAP-eligible workloads to run on zIIPs. (additional terms and conditions apply).

The zIIP's execution environment accepts eligible work from z/OS, which manages and directs the work between the general purpose processor and the zIIP. IBM will not impose software charges on zIIP capacity

What it means

The zIIP, in effect, better enables data to be centralized on the mainframe. The ease and economy of this solution helps break down the walls between transactional datastores on the mainframe and applications that run on distributed computers. Workloads on zIIP can help connect, manage, extend, and protect the data and transactions that originate from the mainframe. With the zIIP capability, the System z9, System z10 and zEnterprise mainframe helps minimize the need to maintain duplicate copies of the data and provide better security between the applications and the data. Thus, zIIP can help your business by:

• Helping to improve resource optimization.
• May help lower cost of computing for eligible workloads.
• Help secure network data and help keep data stores resilient