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Midrange computer

 
Computer Desktop Encyclopedia: midrange computer
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A medium-sized computer system or server. Midrange computers encompass a very broad range and reside in capacity between high-end PCs and mainframes. They cost from $25,000 to more than a million. IBM's AS/400s (iSeries) and HP's 3000 and Alpha families are examples. Formerly called "minicomputers," which were hosts to dumb terminals connected over dedicated cables, most midrange computers today function as servers in a network. See mainframe and minicomputer.

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Midrange computers, or midrange systems, are a class of computer systems which fall in between mainframe computers and microcomputers. The range emerged in the 1960s and were more generally known at the time as minicomputers. Notable midrange computer lines include Digital Equipment Corporation (PDP line), Data General, Hewlett-Packard (HP3000 line), IBM (System/3 and successors), and Sun Microsystems (SPARC Enterprise).

IBM has made several models of midrange computers over these years: the System/3, System/34, System/32, System/36, System/38, and AS/400, which was recently rebranded to System i.

Historically, midrange computers have been sold to small to medium-sized businesses as their main computer, and to larger enterprises for branch- or department-level operations.

Since 1980s, when the client-server computing architecture became predominant, computers of the comparable class are instead universally known as servers to recognize that they "serve" end users at their "client" computers. Since the client-server model was developed in Unix-like operating systems, using this term frequently implies support of standard—rather than proprietary—protocols and programming interfaces.

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