Application System/400 Performance Characteristics

The operating system for Application System/400™ (AS/400™) provides an unprecedented breadth of function and system services in a single, integrated system. The majority of functions are implemented on top of an abstract, high-level machine interface in a hardware-independent manner, using many architectural characteristics normally associated with poor performance. Despite these architectural and functional traits of the operating system, the AS/400 exhibits excellent price and performance characteristics for commercial applications and is a competitive system in the mid-range commercial application arena. A number of design and optimization techniques, many of them unique or innovative, were incorporated into the AS/400 to achieve a combination of advanced design, function, and performance and are the main subjects discussed in this paper.