Patent ID: 8516227

Claim:
A computer program product for executing a machine instruction in a central processing unit of a computing environment, the computer program product comprising: a non-transitory computer readable storage medium readable by a processing circuit and storing instructions for execution by the processing circuit for performing a method comprising: obtaining a machine instruction for execution, the machine instruction being defined for computer execution according to a computer architecture, the machine instruction comprising: an opcode field identifying a set program parameter instruction; and a first field identifying a general register, the contents of which are added to the contents of a second field to form a second operand address; and executing the machine instruction, the executing comprising: responsive to a configuration of the computing environment being configured for sampling to obtain sample data relating to the computing environment, placing a program parameter stored in one or more storage locations designated by the second operand address in a program parameter register, the program parameter register comprising an identifier identifying a task; and responsive to the configuration not being configured for sampling, executing the machine instruction as a no operation.