Up until a short while ago MicroFocus was interpreted P-code, so the much faster CPUS would run at about the same speed as the slower MF CPU. I think it now it compiles to real machine code, which is why the incredible speed boost for CPU intensive work.

Now Barry, you should know better... I deal with that wonderful product called MF Cobol... yes my name is the same one... especially since the pricing structure felt a bit stiffling.

Actually MF now has a COBOL runtime daemon... which is actually why it runs so much faster... It manages the code and "makes it native" on the fly. We saw processing times drop (for the longest program) from 6+ hours for Grades to get sent to a "print file" whilst the Oracle server just twiddles it thumbs. Now the app-servers run it so fast, our S7A starts to complain, 16 Processors and 32GB of RAM and multi-pathing I/O... load average at ~22, 0% idle time and swap gets up to about 4G used... the job is done is ~20 minutes... what a difference. Except the S7A has to pant a while longer catch up... but it does.

At least MF figured out how to make COBOL work finally.