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EMC Announces Mainframe Performance Accelerator For VMAX‏

by Adam Armstrong

EMC Corporation has announced a Mainframe Performance Accelerator (MPA). EMC claims that their latest innovation "improves VMAX FICON connectivity throughput by up to 60% and decreases response time by up to 30%."


EMC Corporation has announced a Mainframe Performance Accelerator (MPA). EMC claims that their latest innovation "improves VMAX FICON connectivity throughput by up to 60% and decreases response time by up to 30%."

Mainframes make up the foundation of the applications that run some of the world's most mission critical applications like credit card processing, flight reservation systems, and banking systems. Surveys have shown that over 60% of large enterprises plan on increasing their mainframe environment. Many of EMC's customers use IBM System z mainframes and VMAX storage, with workloads that require maximum availability, security, and performance. With the MPA, VMAX 40K arrays can better support multiple workloads across existing FICON ports —turbocharging every transaction running on the mainframe, including applications that support third-platform workloads.

Benefits include:

  • Support for multiple software threads dispatched independently onto separate hardware threads on each core
  • Multiple threads to service even a single FICON port
  • Significant investment protection
  • Improved price for performance and better TCO
  • 60% greater IOPS
  • 30% lower latency

Availability and pricing

EMC's MPA is available now free of charge through a software update to the VMAX 40K

EMC's Mainframe page