From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
mainframe \main"frame`\ n. (Computers)
1. A large digital computer serving 100-400 users and
occupying a special air-conditioned room. At any given
point in development of computer technology, the mainframe
will be faster, have large main memeory, and be more
capable than a {minicomputer}, which will in turn be
faster and more capable than a {personal computer}. The
typical personal computer in 1999 is faster than a
mainframe was in 1970.
Syn: mainframe computer.
[WordNet 1.5 +PJC]
2. The board holding the CPU and the memory forming the
central part of a computer to which the peripherals are
attached.
[WordNet 1.5]
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
mainframe
n 1: a large digital computer serving 100-400 users and
occupying a special air-conditioned room [syn: {mainframe},
{mainframe computer}]
2: (computer science) the part of a computer (a microprocessor
chip) that does most of the data processing; "the CPU and the
memory form the central part of a computer to which the
peripherals are attached" [syn: {central processing unit},
{CPU}, {C.P.U.}, {central processor}, {processor},
{mainframe}]
From The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003) [jargon]:
mainframe
n.
Term originally referring to the cabinet containing the central processor
unit or ?main frame? of a room-filling {Stone Age} batch machine. After the
emergence of smaller minicomputer designs in the early 1970s, the
traditional {big iron} machines were described as ?mainframe computers? and
eventually just as mainframes. The term carries the connotation of a
machine designed for batch rather than interactive use, though possibly
with an interactive timesharing operating system retrofitted onto it; it is
especially used of machines built by IBM, Unisys, and the other great
{dinosaur}s surviving from computing's {Stone Age}.
It has been common wisdom among hackers since the late 1980s that the
mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead (outside of the tiny
market for {number-crunching} supercomputers having been swamped by the
recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost personal computing. The
wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers among traditional mainframe makers
in the early 1990s bore this out. The biggest mainframer of all, IBM, was
compelled to re-invent itself as a huge systems-consulting house. (See
{dinosaurs mating} and {killer micro}).
However, in yet another instance of the {cycle of reincarnation}, the port
of Linux to the IBM S/390 architecture in 1999 ? assisted by IBM ? produced
a resurgence of interest in mainframe computing as a way of providing huge
quantities of easily maintainable, reliable virtual Linux servers, saving
IBM's mainframe division from almost certain extinction.
|
