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One generation's "supercomputer" is the next generation's "mainframe", and a "PDA" does not have the same set of functions as a "laptop", but the list still has value, as it provides a ranked categorization of devices. It also ranks some more obscure computer sizes.
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of smaller general-purpose computer developed in the mid-1960s [1] [2] and sold at a much lower price than mainframe [3] and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors.
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, [1] is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and large-scale transaction processing.
Since the rise of the personal computer in the 1980s, IBM and other vendors have created PC-based IBM mainframe-compatible systems which are compatible with the larger IBM mainframe computers. For a period of time PC-based mainframe-compatible systems had a lower price and did not require as much electricity or floor space.
HP 3000 Series III. The HP 3000 series [1] is a family of 16-bit and 32-bit minicomputers from Hewlett-Packard. [2] It was designed to be the first minicomputer with full support for time-sharing in the hardware and the operating system, features that had mostly been limited to mainframes, or retrofitted to existing systems like Digital's PDP-11, on which Unix was implemented.
The Cyber 18 is a 16-bit minicomputer which was a successor to the CDC 1700 minicomputer. It was mostly used in real-time environments. One noteworthy application is as the basis of the 2550—a communications processor used by CDC 6000 series and Cyber 70/Cyber 170 mainframes. The 2550 was a product of CDC's Communications Systems Division, in ...
The fully redesigned z990 mainframes for the mid-range and high-end became available in June and October 2003, respectively. [40] Featuring IBM's first superscalar CMOS mainframe processors, a dual-core chip contained 121 million transistors across 266 mm 2, and was manufactured in a 130 nm process, drawing 55 Watts at 1.2 GHz in the z990. [41]
Companies that sold mainframe computers began to offer machines in the same price and performance range as superminicomputers. [10] By the mid-1980s microprocessors with the hardware architecture of superminicomputers were used to produce scientific and engineering workstations. [11] The minicomputer industry then declined through the early ...