Technology

The mainframe is dead; long live the mainframe

Since its arrival in 1964, the mainframe has been the one constant in an ever-changing sea of technology. It remains so despite periodic predictions of its imminent demise.

01 October 2007

In the May edition of Brainstorm, we investigated the origins of electronic computing and how that culminated in the arrival of what is often referred to as the first mainframe: IBM`s System/360. More recently, we examined two other classes of machine that emerged from those same roots: the minicomputer and the supercomputer. Now it`s time to look at how the mainframe evolved from those IBM-dominated days of the ‘60s and early ‘70s.

In Inventing the Electronic Century, author Alfred Chandler explains how the 360 represented a consolidation for an IBM that was facing increasing competition in the late 1960s. Indeed, before launching the 360 family, Big Blue had seven different lines, each targeting a different price/performance range. On top of that, each used different peripherals and had its own operating software and set of applications. In a word, they were incompatible. Add to this the fact that IBM`s competitors all followed different development paths and created proprietary systems and devices, and you have a sense of the computing landscape through the ‘50s and early ‘60s.

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