Pc or Mainframe

Mainframe computers were first developed in the 1950s, and it is still evolving till the current century. Mainframes in the 1960s are very huge in size and require an entire room for it to run correctly. The mainframes in the 2000s however, are only as large as a refrigerator. Mainframes are capable of handling thousands of users simultaneously. Mainframe computers are able to process huge amount of instructions, in fact, million instructions per second. Mainframes are very expensive and

The host writes a byte of data into the data-out register, and sets the write bit in the command register

A multiprogramming is used to keep the CPU busy most of the time, i.e. increase utilization of system CPU. This is due to the fact that multiprogramming is performed by job scheduling, i.e. with the subset of all the jobs kept in memory. Thus when CPU has to wait, then OS switches to another job for keeping CPU busy.

I will be focusing on two of these systems, Mainframe and the DMS. The Mainframe system is an antiquated system that can no longer support the current needs of the division. Mainframe has much involved with its use, an aging workforce, and high mainframe costs, lack of innovation and flexibility and technological security risks. As the society and current Texas standards require electronic filing and business process via e-machines, kiosks and among other items. Not only is the current two systems substantially ineffective operation of technology, the need of non-standardized systems pounds the ability of management to access, manage and illustrate analytical data components for strategic planning purposes and routine performance inspection.

The mainframe supports many users. Multiple processors are needed to handle the extra load that mainframes receive. Multiple processors are the standard for mainframes while it is only an option for personal computers. This helps the mainframe 's stability because a backup processor can be used in case of a failure. This is also what makes the operating system more complex then the personal computer. Stability is expected for the mainframe more than a personal computer. The mainframe is also expected to run 24 hours a day 7 days a week. This is why stability is so important with the mainframe. The mainframe does not stop working when everyone goes home. The cost of the mainframe encourages the users to use it as much as possible.

The most powerful computers in the technology world are the Supercomputers. Hence, as the word ‘super’ elaborate that supercomputers are usually used for the projects that needs to process large amount of data, at very high speed. Supercomputers not only has the high processing power; they are also huge in size. You need a big room to fit in a supercomputer, and a strong cooling system to avoid getting a supercomputer to get overheated. They usually have more than one CPU’s to generate high-level data processing speed, and they need to have a large storage as well. The unit system that are used to measure the computing performance of the supercomputer are ‘FLOPS’ (Floating-point Operation Per Second). The first ever supercomputer was made during the time of Second World War named “Colossus”. It was made by The Great Britain, specially to crack the coded messages of Germans. Colossus could read up to 5000 characters in a second. Colossus was the start of a revolution in supercomputing. Since 1944, more enhanced and powerful supercomputers were introduced for example MIT Whirlwind by MIT in 1950. Cray-1 designed by Seymour Cray in 1975. Seymour Cray was called the ‘Father of Supercomputer’. He founded Cray Research in 1972, which designs supercomputers. The computing power of Cray-1 was 80 megaflops (vector) and 72 megaflops (scaler). After Cray-1, Cray X-MP, and Cray-2 also came out with 4 CPU’s and twice the Floating-point Operation Per Seconds. One of the

In 1978, Intel came out with the 8086 chip. This chip had 29,000 transistors, 20 address lines, and could “talk with up to 1MB of RAM ... designers never suspected anyone would ever need more than 1 MB of RAM” (PCMech, 2001, para. 4). Intel continued to produce its 8000 series chips, increasing the speed and the memory each time. In 1982, the 286 was the first processor to have protected mode, which was later used by Windows and other operating systems to allow programs to run separately but concurrently (PCMech, 2001, para. 8). In the late 1980s, Intel came out with the 386. The 386 was a huge step forward, as it had 275,000 transistors, came in a 33 MHz version, worked with 4 GB of RAM, and could support a virtual memory of 64 TB (PCMech, 2001, para. 9). In 2002, hyper-threading came out in the Pentium 4 HT, which meant that the CPU could be fooled into thinking it had two CPUs for each one that it actually had. Using hyper-threading along with additional cores has enhanced performance and speed because some cores are utilized for programs while others perform background jobs (Hoffman, 2014, paras. 6,7). Another way CPUs have been able to increase speed is by raising the number of cores per CPU socket, and utilizing an I/O Hub “called QuickPath Interconnect” (Santana, 2014, p. 565). The use of multiprocessing has been the key for the development of today’s CPUs.

The main difference between microcomputers and super computers is the power of usage. Microcomputers are the general purpose computers used at homes, offices and other places where a relatively moderate speed of working is appreciable. Whereas super computers are used in the fields of nuclear processing, microbiological sectors, space, weather forecasting etc because of their high-speed performance of trillions of operations per second. Advantages of using microcomputers are many, which include facilitation in research and gathering information, establishing communication with people etc. while the disadvantages may be its contribution to less

Mainframes have always been some of the beefiest computing platforms on the planet. For years they were the most powerful computing platform money could buy. Even with the advent of cloud computing and massive data centers filled with commodity hardware, mainframes are still unmatched in transactions per second. This type of processing is still the lifeblood of banks and many other businesses.

| Greater RAM means more speed and the ability to run more applications at the same time; perfect for creating, editing, and sharing videos online and across a network

Every computer needs an operating system to operate. The operating system controls everything that the computer does, the master controller. It is the gasoline of the computer. According to Parsons and Oja (2014), they state that an operating system is “the integral part of virtually every computer system. It fundamentally affects how you can use your computer” (p 184). Most computers are bought with the operating system already installed.

Process Management: Processes are applications running in state. The operating system ensures that each process is fairly treated in terms of processor time allocated in an environment which is multitasking. The operating system has the capability of doing multiple processes. The allocation of Central Processing Unit (CPU) is normally being affected because some operating system always allows processes to be assigned apriority. Operating systems that are more interactive sometimes employ feedback in which tasks that the user is working upon receives a higher priority. In most cases, there is background process that runs when there is no other process waiting for CPU (Stroman, Wilson, & Wauson, 2004).

Over all the world there are software programmable devices for all applications for different uses and purposes. Also there are software programmable devices that are used only for networking applications, they are called Network Processors. Network Processors have evolved over the years and have a lot of different types for same and different purposes. Network Processors are used for moving data from place to another as Routing, Switching, and Bridging, providing Services as Traffic Shaping, Security, and Monitoring, also they execute programs to handle packets in a network. They are one of the most complex systems ever created by Humans. There are many types of network processors as RISC, CISC, Mainframe, and Vector processor architectures. They uses Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) that are used for design techniques for the set of processors and for implementing the instruction work flow.

The operating systems Linux®, Macintosh® (Mac) and Microsoft® Windows® are the main software to every computer system to run properly along with other hardware. These operating systems (OS 's) are very different in several ways, but they also have some similarities too. Linux, Mac and Windows use memory management, process management, file management and security management to operate the computer systems correctly. The first management to compare and contrast between the three OS is memory management.

“The term microcomputer is generally synonymous with personal computer (PC), or a computer that depends on a microprocessor. Microcomputers are designed to be used by individuals, whether in the form of PCs, workstations or notebook computers. A microcomputer contains a central processing unit (CPU) on a microchip (the microprocessor), a memory system (typically read-only memory and random access memory), a bus system and I/O ports, typically housed in a motherboard.” (Beal)