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What is mainframe?
What is a mainframe? A mainframe is basically just an oversized computer. I will discuss what mainframes are, why they are used, what it takes for a computer to be classified as a mainframe, and what companies are still caught up.
First, what is a mainframe? As stated before a mainframe is just a big oversized computer. Back in the day mainframes were a room of computers that cost millions and could support thousands of users. But as technology improved and the years passed mainframes were no longer defined by their size. Today mainframes can be best defined by their operating systems such as Unix and Linux, and IBM's z/OS, OS/390, MVS, VM, and VSE. Also today mainframes can run out of laptops and support two servers. Mainframes combine four important features: 1) Reliable single-thread performance, which is almost mandatory for reasonable operations against a database. 2) Maximum I/O connectivity, which means mainframes stand out at providing for huge disk farms. 3) Maximum I/O bandwidth, so connections between drives and processors have few choke-points. 4) Reliability--mainframes often allow "graceful degradation" and service while the system is running.
Second, a mainframe server can be used as a file server for a very large organization (this usually means the government or government contracted organizations). Large universities and research organizations also use mainframes for various projects. Mainframes can be clustered together to connect the power of multiple servers and perform a single task. Cancer researchers use clusters of IBM servers to perform linear algebra and other mathematical operations needed to complete research. On the fun side, Sun Microsystems is now leasing their enterprise servers to certain groups such as animators and graphics producers to perform picture.
Third, for a computer to be classified as a mainframe it should have from 1-16 CPU’s, its memory must range from 128megabytes...