ES/3090: a realization of ESA/370 system architecture in IBM´s most powerful mainframe computer through a balance of technology and system innovations

The author describes how IBM´s most powerful system achieved significant growth through a balance of technology use and systems design. Selective use of a novel advanced transistor technology combined with innovative processor-design techniques solved many system design limitations. The author examines several system design problems and the solutions. He describes how a broad spectrum of systems architecture environments were enhanced and how significant data path improvements resulted in very high throughput and fast response time. Issues discussed are the writable control store, active address spaces, and the improvement of data-sharing performance