Lesson 2.

1
Mainframe computers and supercomputers
 Mainframe
Computers

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 Mainframe Designed to serve thousands of users together
Computers and carry out many instructions.

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 Serve many terminals

A terminal is a computer connected to main

frame

Mainframe They host business databases.

Computers
Used for large scale transactions and batch
processing.

Used for Statistical Analysis such as

Analysis of census data

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Supercomputers
Designed to carry out large
number of calculations
Uses of Supercomputers
• Research in Quantum Mechanics.
• Weather forecasting and Climate research
 RAS –
Reliability,
Availability and
Serviceability

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Characteristics of Mainframe and Super
Computers - Reliability
Hardware components capable of extensive self check.

Hardware must be able to recover automatically in case of failure.

Software must have gone through extensive testing.

Software must be update quickly if problems are detected

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Characteristics of Mainframe and Super
Computers - Availability
Mainframe must be available all time

Extra hardware such as storage and power supply automatically

take over if a component fails.

Hot-swappable – Hardware components that can be replaced

while the system is running.

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Characteristics of Mainframe and Super
Computers – Serviceability
Ability to be maintained and repaired

Maintenance time periods are very short.

Repair can be completed with adding extra components while

system is running

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Characteristics of Mainframe and Super
Computers – Cooling Systems
These computers generate a lot of heat due to their power and
quantity of process.

Cooling systems are put in place to cool the warm air in

equipment racks and carry the heat to large chillers

Another method is to use liquid cooling.

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Characteristics of Mainframe and Super
Computers – Security
Multi layer approach to security including identifying users,
authentication and access control

Each resource will have different layers of access

Security software monitors potential threats and alerts

administrators.

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 • MIPs – Millions of instructions per second.
• Not an accurate measure
• CISC processors (Complex instruction set
computing) Vs Reduced Instruction Set
Computing processors
Performance • Workload mix
• Memory and cache sizes
Checks • Amount of input/output activity
• OS and software
• Changes made to hardware

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Performance Checks – FLOPS and MFLOPS
Floating point operations per second

Mega floating point operations per second One million FLOPS

More reliable than MIPs

Still some discrepancies where some processors can carry out a single FLOP but others would require several
FLOPs for the same result.

Read example on Page 30

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Advantages of Mainframe and
Supercomputers
Designed to last
Designed to be
Scalable for 10 years at the
RAS
least

Process and store Hardware failures

More than one OS
large amounts of are notified
can be used
data immediately

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Disadvantages of Mainframe and
Supercomputers

High cost – can be used

Cooling systems must
only by large Lot of space required
be placed
organizations

Specialist support staff Interface is command

Need massive external
required for driven – difficult to
storage drives
maintenance understand

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