Edit WIKI Page - Mainframes

=Introduction= {| class='wikitable' |- |[[Image: Alinutza/ibm-701.JPG]] |Basically the term "mainframes" comes from a long history of computers that were as big as one room and they were fulfilling various tasks in metal boxes or frames. Today a mainframe is a computer used by enterprise to perform critical application and is typically synonymous with computers compatible with the IBM System/360 |} Other systems that can be considered mainframes are Burroughs systems, the UNIVAC 1100/2200 and other IBM computers =Brief history= *'''1500'''-Leonardo da Vinci designs a mechanical calculator *'''1880'''-Herman Hollerith develops a punched-card system to automate the U.S. census. Later his tehnology became IBM *'''1950-1970'''-Mainframes start taking over the data processing. IBM and the seven dwarfs:IBM, Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and UNIVAC *'''1967'''-First IBM 360/Model 91 shipped to NASA GSFC. *'''1970'''-IBM announces a family of machines with an enhanced instruction set, called System/370. The 370s proved so popular that there was a two-year waiting list of customers who had ordered a systems *'''1985'''-You had to pay 5 million dollars to get the entry level of 3090 high-end processor of the IBM 308X computer series *'''1990'''-Mainframes manufactures start to leave the market and there's basically only one manufacturer of major importance left: IBM *'''1999'''-IBM released a new generation of S/390 *'''2002'''-The IBM S/390 G5/G6 enterprise server family has up to 256 channels, from 2 to 8 Cryptographic Coprocessors, from 8 to 32 Gigabytes of memory, and can run under OS/390, MVS, VM, VSE, or TPF operating systems *'''2004'''-The 3/4 ton IBM eServer zSeries 890, dubbed the "Baby Shark" can host up to 32 GBytes of memory *'''2007'''-IBM's Blue-Gene is capable of things that human kind couldn't think it's possible. It's capable of one million gigaflops and it has about 300k cores A full history on mainframes can be found on [http://www.vikingwaters.com/htmlpages/MFHistory.htm Viking Waters.com] =Usage in various fields and areas= Mainframe's main purpose is to run commercial applications of Fortune 1000 businesses and other large-scale computing processes Mainly, mainframes are used for bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, ERP.Most important are banking and insurance businesses where enormous amounts of data are processed =Statistics= Early 2006, IBM dominates the mainframes market with a 90% share. Other vendors are: *Unisys with ClearPath mainframes, based on earlier Sperry and Burroughs product lines *Fujitsu's Nova systems, rebranded Unisys ES7000's *Hitachi co-developed the zSeries 800 with IBM to share expenses *Hewlett-Packard sold its unique NonStop systems, which was acquired by Tandem Computers *Groupe Bull's DPS mainframes are available in Europe =Characteristics and features= <font size=3>Programming languages</font> In the past 85% of the mainframes programs were written in the COBOL programming language Even though Cobol still remains the most widely used language for development in mainframe environment Java and C++ are growing faster. Other [http://www.iterating.com/programminglanguages programming languages] used are PL/I and Assembly language =Mainframe or supercomputer?= Mainframes focus on output/input, reliability and solving mixed workload, as for supercomputers they focus on speed. Both of them execute parallel computing but they expose it differently to the programmer, supercomputers makes it complex, while mainframes just use it to run multiple task When it comes to complicated computations supercomputers are better as they are optimized for that. Mainframes can do more on simple computations and a lot of workload Supercomputer are build for a specific task while mainframes can handle a variety of them For cryptographic support, I/O handling, monitoring, memory handling, mainframes have ancillary service processors assisting the main processor and so the actual processor is very high. Supercomputers tend not to use service processors =Most Popular= http://www.iterating.com/products/z-OS =Communities= *[http://ibmmainframes.com/recent.php IBM's Mainframe Forum -Recent] *[http://www.indeed.com/forum/job/z%2Fos-systems-programmer.html Z/os Systems Programmer Forum] =See More= *[http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/Operating-Systems/wiki More about Operating Systems -How to choose and how to find the OS that's right for you] *[http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/Operating-Systems List with popular Operating Systems with user ratings and reviews] *[http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/WebOS Learn about Web operating systems and what are they] *[http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/Unix-like Unix Like OSes. Browse through hundreds of them to get the one you need] *[http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/Microsoft Microsoft Operating Systems - user reviews and ratings] *[http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/Apple-Macintosh Mac OS from Apple] *[http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/Embedded-systems Embedded-systems -wiki, reviews, discussions]

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