Why is mainframe computing important?

Answer 1

Mainframes are primarily used to store and retrieve vast amounts of data simultaneously amongst many workstations. They are typically used in the financial and banking industries, the airline industry, space agencies and universities. That is, any small to large-scale organisation that requires a data centre.

Mainframes are often thought of as being enormous computers, however the size is actually immaterial. The smallest mainframe consists of just a single cabinet housing the processors, memory, hard-drives and backup facilities, not much unlike a standard desktop computer (albeit slightly bigger). The real difference is in the number of workstations. Whereas a desktop computer independently serves just one workstation with its own discrete set of programs and data, a mainframe can simultaneously serve hundreds if not thousands of workstations with the same programs and data.

Their size is primarily dependant upon the number of workstations and the amount of data that must be served. The mainframe itself (the processor and working memory) may be housed in one or more cabinets, while the data and backup facilities are spread over several more cabinets, perhaps even in separate rooms. The processor itself may consist of several processors all working in parallel (not unlike a multi-core processor, but actually made up of several multi-core processors).

Large mainframes are often confused with supercomputers. However supercomputers are specifically designed to perform high-speed, highly-complex floating point mathematics (with many decimal places), such as predicting the weather or to simulate nuclear reactions, whereas mainframes are specifically designed for transaction processing -- moving data around and performing simple arithmetic upon the data (with relatively few decimal places).

Although their role in the workplace has been partially replaced with cloud-based computing (server farms), the need to keep sensitive data in-house rather than entrusted to an external agency means they still have a vital role in the workplace, most notably in the banking industry.

Moreover, the "gameframe" is a newer breed of mainframe that includes features not unlike that of a supercomputer. They are best described as being a hybrid of the two. As the name suggests, they are aimed at the online gaming community, however their usage could be extended to the film and video effects industries.