Comparing and Contrasting PCs and mainframes Essay

Before the man of personal figurer or PC, there is mini computing machine or microcomputer, the term computer simply referred to central mainframe computers. Mainframes and personal computers have changed drastically over the years solely their core functions and governing bodys have stayed the same. The mainframe is practiced to connect dual users for hulking organizations, while personal computers be generally used for a case-by-case user. The more drastic changes for mainframes and personal computers have been the increase of speed, memory, and the reduction of size. Mainframes use to be the size of descriptorings, now they are the size of a habitual Intel blade emcee system.Last time when you need to access the mainframe you need to use a terminal for data entry or retrieve certain data. Then, the idea came to off load some of the impact from the mainframe and place it on a personal computer. Compare A mainframe is non much difference from a personal computer. at that place are many similarities betwixt mainframes and personal computers which stands to reason since oneness evolved from the other. both mainframes and personal computers have one or more central processor units, a huge number of memory, one or more busses, and one or more I/O systems.Another similarity between the two is that they are both IBM-based systems and similar hardware is used to build them. They can in like manner per variety some complex calculations, applications and handle multiple programs. Another area is that both require operating system to resolve and in addition to handle and optimize all the I/O systems or modules. Differences Although they are much similarity between the mainframes and computer as respect above, the similarity stop there as they are many differences too. Mainframes greet much more in terms of thousands of dollar than a figure personal computer or server.The mainframe nowadays takes up slight space and less power consumption compare to a server farm task to do the same job. As mention (Shurkin, 1996), doing processing jobs run constantly in real-time and must be avail equal more than 99. 99% of the time. The reboots and lock-ups common with PCs are simply not acceptable. Thousands of individual users can log in simultaneously from a word form of sources such as computer terminals, ATM, or Internet web sites, and fatten up a single transaction. Time-sharing jobs can be started when needed from a computer terminal by authorized users who then use the mainframe as their own big PC.Finally, batch jobs are started automatically by the system at regular times according to a strict regulate schedule. Batch jobs are used to do the periodic processing necessary on the data being received from transaction and time-sharing jobs. Closing the news report books at month-end or copying disk files to tape for backup are examples of batch type processing. The OS or Operating System in a mainframe such as from IBM z/OS wh ich is the successor to the IBM OS/390 can run Multiple Virtual Systems (MVS).The new IBM z/OS support WebSphere Application Server on z/OS, and also the new zFS (System z File System) Direct I/O dexterity in z/OS. This help to enhance performance improvements to the system, and also offer an easier Parallel Sysplex functionality (IBM, September 2011). In an article by (Barnett G, 2010) express that the mainframe is best suited for enterprise cloud computing as it is substantially able to handle hundreds of complex applications or programs, and most grave able to run hundreds of environment in a single physical step and easily deliver the 247 availability that our customers demand.Conclusion (Doerbecker & Patterson, 2002), stated that the role of the mainframe has gradually changed from that of a data processor to that of a server, with the processing being done on the users PC. It has also been modified to interface to the Internet through the addition of TCP/IP protocols, U nix, and Java programming, to enable businesses to connect to their customers over that network. Once the only form of business computer available, the mainframe has survived the PC revolution and maintained an important function in commercial computing.