Strategies for optimizing and tuning application code to run on IBM POWER7® and IBM POWER7+™ processor-based systems can be invaluable to your environment and to your business. They can substantially improve the performance of the applications that run on these systems. Optimizing and tuning your IBM Power Systems™ environment can be an important step in meeting your critical business needs. Optimized systems will deliver the performance to meet your current requirements and your future growth needs. By using the strategies provided in this solution guide, you can maximize the return on your hardware investment with minimal effort. These strategies can provide an avenue to deliver continuing, long-term value over the life of your system.

The information in this solution guide is drawn from application optimization efforts across many types of code running on the IBM AIX® and Linux® operating systems. It focuses on the more pervasive performance opportunities that are identified and how to capitalize on them. This technical information was developed by IBM domain experts and is directed to IBM presales organizations in support of Power System products, such as the IBM Power 780.

Strategies for optimizing and tuning application code to run on IBM POWER7® and IBM POWER7+™ processor-based systems can be invaluable to your environment and to your business. They can substantially improve the performance of the applications that run on these systems. Optimizing and tuning your IBM Power Systems™ environment can be an important step in meeting your critical business needs. Optimized systems will deliver the performance to meet your current requirements and your future growth needs. By using the strategies provided in this solution guide, you can maximize the return on your hardware investment with minimal effort. These strategies can provide an avenue to deliver continuing, long-term value over the life of your system.

The information in this solution guide is drawn from application optimization efforts across many types of code running on the IBM AIX® and Linux® operating systems. It focuses on the more pervasive performance opportunities that are identified and how to capitalize on them. This technical information was developed by IBM domain experts and is directed to IBM presales organizations in support of Power System products, such as the IBM Power 780 (Figure 1).



Figure 1. IBM Power 780 server


Did you know?

Trends in processor design are making it more important than ever to consider improving application performance. The focus of processor design has shifted to delivering multiple cores per processor chip and to delivering more hardware threads in each core (known as simultaneous multithreading (SMT) in IBM Power Architecture® terminology). Some of the best opportunities for improving application performance are in delivering scalable code by having an application effectively use multiple concurrent threads of execution. Another trend is support for larger page sizes. The IBM Power Architecture provides support for multiple virtual memory page sizes, which provides performance benefits to an application because of hardware efficiencies that are associated with larger page sizes.


Business value

You can follow simple strategies and techniques to optimize your POWER7 environment and to analyze and maximize system performance. These strategies and techniques can be invaluable and offer the following advantages: