Chapter 7. Low Level System Information

7.1. Machine Interface

7.1.1. Processor Architecture

The ESA/390 Architecture is specified by the following documents

Only the features of ESA/390 processor instruction set and the following optional instructions may be assumed to be present:

  • additional floating point facility

  • compare and move extended facility

  • immediate and relative instruction facility

  • string instruction facility

  • square-root facility

An application should determine if any additional instruction set features are available before using those additional features. If a feature is not present, then a conforming application shall not use it.

Conforming applications shall not invoke the implementations underlying system call interface directly. The interfaces in the implementation base libraries shall be used instead.

Rationale: Implementation-supplied base libraries may use the system call interface but applications must not assume any particular operating system or kernel version is present.

Applications conforming to this specification must provide feedback to the user if a feature that is required for correct execution of the application is not present. Applications conforming to this specification should attempt to execute in a diminished capacity if a required instruction set feature is not present.

This specfication does not provide any performance guarantees of a conforming system. A system conforming to this specification may be implemented in either hardware or software.