Mainframe Computers Essay Research Paper Mainframe ComputersMainframe

Mainframe Computers Essay, Research Paper

Mainframe Computers

Mainframe computer is defined by Webster dictionary, as a computer with it’s cabinet and internal circuits; also: a large fast computer that can handle multiple tasks concurrently.1 The second definition is probably more accurately because in the 1940s, there were a half-dozen computers, designed in clumsy ways, using expensive (vacuum tube) components, consuming vast amounts of power, which would take up large amounts of floor space. No one in those days thought that more than a few dozen such machines would be required in the, world. This was the era of the mainframe, a large, expensive, central processing unit designed to process one job at a time. The computers of the mainframe era cost a million dollars or more each. Because they were so expensive, they were in a central location: one such computer would serve the needs of an entire government agency; a large corporation would have a single computer in its main office. Mainframes were managed by data-processing professionals-individuals that had grown up with the tab product generation of business machines that were in widespread use in the first half of this century. 2

Mainframes dominated the computing world from 1950 through the early 1970s. 3 One of the first mainframe computers and probably the most famous was ENIAC. The computer (ENIAC) was produced by a partnership between the U.S. government and the University of Pennsylvania. It consisted of 18,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors and 5 million soldered joints. The computer was such a massive piece of machinery that it consumed 160 kilowatts of electrical power, enough energy to dim the lights in an entire section of Philadelphia.4 It was developed by John Presper Eckert (1919-1995) and John W. Mauchly (1907-1980). The mainframe computer was first used by the military during World War II to break codes, calculate trajectory, and design new weapons.5 These tasks would have been to time consuming and tedious for humans, plus these machines were more accurate then any humans.

The more current mainframes are computers that are designed for data processing with heavy use of I/O units such as large-capacity disks and printers; they do not necessarily employ the most advanced hardware and software technology. They have one to four processors, although some have a few more. Mainframes, such as the ES/9000 family of computers of the International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), are used for such applications as payroll computations, accounting, business transactions, information retrieval, and airline seat reservations.6

Supercomputers

By 1948, the invention of the transistor greatly changed the computer’s development. The first large-scale machines to take advantage of this transistor technology were early the supercomputers. The first two supercomputers were by IBM and LARC by Sperry-Rand.7 These computers, both developed for atomic energy laboratories, could handle an enormous amount of data, a capability much in demand by atomic scientists. The machines were costly, however, and tended to be too powerful for the business sector’s computing needs, thereby limiting their attractiveness. Only two LARCs were ever installed: one in the Lawrence Radiation Labs in Livermore, California, for which the computer was named (Livermore Atomic Research Computer) and the other at the U.S. Navy Research and Development Center in Washington, D.C. 8 By the time it was the 1960’s, there were a number of commercially successful supercomputers used in business, universities, and government from companies such as Burroughs Control Data, Honeywell, IBM, Sperry-Rand, and others. These supercomputers were also of solid state design, and contained transistors in place of vacuum tubes. They also contained all the components we associate with the modern day computer: printers, tape storage, disk storage, memory, operating systems, and stored programs. One important example was the IBM 1401, which was universally accepted throughout industry, and is considered by many to be the Model T of the computer industry.9

Supercomputers have certain distinguishing features. Unlike conventional computers, they usually have more than one CPU (central processing unit), which contains circuits for interpreting program instructions and executing arithmetic and logic operations in proper sequence. The use of several CPUs to achieve high computational rates is required by the physical limits of circuit technology. Electronic signals cannot travel faster than the speed of light, which thus constitutes a fundamental speed limit for signal transmission and circuit switching. Rapid retrieval of stored data and instructions is required to support the extremely high computational speed of CPUs. Therefore, most supercomputers have a very large storage capacity, as well as a very fast input/output capability.

Still another distinguishing characteristic of supercomputers is their use of vector arithmetic for example they are able to operate on pairs of lists of numbers rather than on mere pairs of numbers.10 For instance, a typical supercomputer can multiply a list of hourly wage rates for a group of factory workers by a list of hours worked by members of that group to produce a list of dollars earned by each worker in roughly the same time that it takes a regular computer to calculate the amount earned