International Business Machines Corporation

Thomas A Thackrey

Anthony C Sumrall

Alberto Poggesi

Christopher Cook

Ivan Jellinek

Wilton T Byrum

According to one embodiment, a system includes a data storage device having data stored therein and a native computer system having resident thereon a controlling operating system in communication with the data storage device. The system also includes a primary computer system having resident thereon a primary operating system in communication with the native computer system via a first connection, the primary computer system being in communication with the data storage device via a second connection that is not in communication with the native computer system, the primary computer system having a processor executing a primary application. A volume on the data storage device is under logical control of the controlling operating system of the native computer system, and the primary computer system reads or writes data to the volume directly via the second connection. Other systems, methods and computer program products are also described relating to accessing data.

System, method and computer program product for accessing data from a source by a variety of methods to improve performance and ensure data integrity

Processing within an emulated computing environment is facilitated. Code used to implement system-provided (e.g., standard or frequently used) routines referenced in an application being emulated is native code available for the computing environment, rather than emulated code. Responsive to encountering a reference to a system-provided routine in the application being emulated, the processor is directed to native code, rather than emulated code, even though the application is being emulated.

Employing native routines instead of emulated routines in an application being emulated

Work units are transparently offloaded from a main processor to offload processing systems for execution. For a particular work unit, a suitable offload processing system is selected to execute the work unit. This includes determining the requirements of the work unit, including, for instance, the hardware and software requirements; matching those requirements against a set of offload processing systems with an arbitrary set of available resources; and determining if a suitable offload processing system is available. If a suitable offload processing system is available, the work unit is scheduled to execute on that offload processing system with no changes to the work unit itself. Otherwise, the work unit may execute on the main processor or wait to be executed on an offload processing system.

Execution of work units in a heterogeneous computing environment

A work unit (e.g., a load module) to be executed on one processor may be eligible to be offloaded and executed on another processor that is heterogeneous from the one processor. The other processor is heterogeneous in that is has a different computing architecture and/or different instruction set from the one processor. A determination is made as to whether the work unit is eligible for offloading. The determination is based, for instance, on the particular type of instructions (e.g., particular type of service call and/or program call instructions) included in the work unit and whether those types of instructions are supported by the other processor. If the instructions of the work unit are supported by the other processor, then the work unit is eligible for offloading.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Thomas A Thackrey