IBM mainframes still chugging after all these years

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They're not really turning 40

While there is a sense of continuity, calling the mainframes of today the same machines as those of 40 years ago is meaningless. They are made by the same company and they are both computers. Comparing a 360 to a 370 to a 390 shows big differences. After that, IBM mainframes became a different brand of server with some unique features.

If I wanted a concise definition of mainframe, the best I could come up with is "big server." Companies like Sun never adopted the term, but their enterprise computers are conceptually mainframes as much as IBMs. The architecture may be completely different, but a mainframe is just a large computer designed to centralize workload.

Likewise, anything that ran on a lower end mainframe 20 years ago could easily run on a box the size of a standard PC today. I'm not talking about a change of architecture either. I'm talking about a low end server from IBM that runs z/OS or z/VM and is essentially a miniaturized mainframe. But once you have it in a box the size of a PC, it still supports hundreds (which is what small mainframes did a few decades ago) or even a few thousand users, then do you call it a mainframe or not? And can you say that it is 40 year old technology if both the hardware and software have improved in leaps and bounds?

The operating systems have changed too. OS became OS/MVS then MVS/XA, MVS/ESA, and finally z/OS, if I recall correctly. Calling it the same operating system is more of a stretch than comparing Windows 1.x to Windows XP. Yes, there are superficial similarities, and yes, the machines of today can do what the ones 40 years ago could do (except it would be awfully hard to find a card reader) but they are different machines.

Posted by: wresnick   Posted on: 09/28/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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