One thing I spend quite some time with, is creating new presentations about topics I am interested in myself. Most of the time I get the chance to show them in public, just like I did with this one in Germany earlier this week (November 2023).
The work started already last year when I was asked to do a key note presentation for Common Sweden, in a time when the cost of electricity was super hot.
A bit of background of why I am curious about this. Below is a screenshot taken (Thank you Åke H Olsson) from an IBM i environment running in production for a very happy customer. One IBM Power core (CPU) activated, using around 1 - 2% of that core without any performance issues. I would guess running an ERP solution on a Windows box with MS SQL or Oracle as a database would take some more capacity.
They are btw also using the same server for their email system, running on Lotus Domino and everything else their need to support their business.
Now there is not a single answer on this big question. And I am not yet done with my presentation as there are so many components related to this. A new slide was added to my presentation thanks to Heidi Schmidt at Common Germany who showed this picture in one of her key note sessions:
On average, compiled languages consumed 120J to execute the solutions, while for virtual machine and interpreted languages this value was 576J and 2365J, respectively
RPG (major programming language on IBM i) is not on the list, but should be somewhere around C/C++ someone said (Was it you Tim Rowe?)..
I've grouped the "reasons" within two categories, one focusing on IBM Power and the hardware/infrastructure and one around the IBM i operating system.
Both have a large number of "characteristics" that contributes to the overall efficiency, and all will not be covered here in the article but is still in my presentation of course.
IBM i Specific areas
Please feel free to reach out if you have other ideas or thoughts about this..
/Torbjörn Appehl