International Business Machines Corporation

Randall W Philley

Timothy John Slegel

Christian Jacobi

Brenton F Belmar

Lisa Cranton Heller

Damian Leo Osisek

Hubertus Franke

Martin Schwidefsky

William Alan Holder

Ingo Adlung

Ray Mansell

Jong Hyuk Choi

Gustav E Sittmann, Iii

Dan F Greiner

Anthony Saporito

Khary J Alexander

Peter Jeremy Relson

Christopher Raymond Conklin

Gustav E Sittman, Iii

Processing within a computing environment that supports pageable guests is facilitated. Processing is facilitated in many ways, including, but not limited to, associating guest and host state information with guest blocks of storage; maintaining the state information in control blocks in host memory; enabling the changing of states; and using the state information in management decisions. In one particular example, the guest state includes an indication of usefulness and importance of memory contents to the guest, and the host state reflects the ease of access to memory contents. The host and guest state information is used in managing memory of the host and/or guests.

Facilitating processing within computing environments supporting pageable guests

Processing of transactions within a computing environment is facilitated by taking actions to increase the chances of successfully executing a transaction. A counter is maintained that provides a count of how often a transaction has aborted. The counter increments the count each time the transaction is aborted, and it is reset to zero upon successful completion of the transaction or an interruption leading to no more re-executions of the transaction. If the count reaches a threshold value, then an interrupt is presented and transaction execution is unsuccessful. However, before the count reaches the threshold, a number of actions may be taken to increase the chances of successfully executing the transaction. These actions include actions to be performed within the processor executing the transaction, and/or actions to be performed against conflicting processors.

Facilitating transaction completion subsequent to repeated aborts of the transaction

Restricting processing within a processor to facilitate transaction completion

An operation is provided to signal a processor that action is to be taken to facilitate execution of a transaction that has aborted one or more times. The operation is specified within an instruction or is itself an instruction. The instruction is executed based on detecting an abort of the transactions, and includes a field indicating how many times the transaction has aborted. The processor uses this information to determine what action is to be taken.

Processor assist facility

Reassignment of a physical processor backing a logical processor is performed concurrently to the operation of the processor. The operating state of one physical processor is loaded on another physical processor, such that the logical processor is backed by a different physical processor. This reassignment is performed concurrent to processor operation and transparent to the operating system.

Concurrent physical processor reassignment

Concurrent physical processor reassignment method

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Randall W Philley