What the hell is a mainframe?
What the hell is a mainframe?
John Fisher
Zachary Lopez
Basically a server
Connor Bennett
>huge and loud
>power hungry and heat producing
>expensive
>expensive
>expensive again because there is no competitor
>so proprietary it makes windows look freetarded
>license dongles
>80s software
Anything else you wanna know?
Adam Perry
I know but why call it a ((mainframe)) then? What's the difference?
I've heard that they have a shit load of processors.
Isaac Russell
basically this, but bigger. A rackmounted 1-4U server is nice. A mainframe is that, but with stuff like virtualization built in, redundancies out the ass, all sorts of shit. Hard to explain.
More or less useless information too unless you are unfortunate enough to have to deal with one.
Tyler Cooper
imagine a motherboard and cpu and a case made just for a billion of them
Grayson Bennett
What can a mainframe do that a server can't? Why use them?
Are they still only a thing because some institutions still rely on lots of old COBOL code or some shit?
If so, assuming they have a specific cpu architecture and weird I/O, why not just recompile it to like x86 and use them on normal severs?
Nathan Cook
The difference between a mainframe and server is what fire suppression system is used in the room. If it's dumping halon it's a mainframe.
Bentley Cooper
>What can a mainframe do that a server can't? Why use them?
The architecture isn't anything like a normal PC or server. It has a bunch of redundant systems that can be hot swapped and the CPU and other support chips are specifically designed for certain workloads.
>Are they still only a thing because some institutions still rely on lots of old COBOL code or some shit?
Yes and no. Some customers genuinely need a mainframe while others are too afraid to retool.
>If so, assuming they have a specific cpu architecture and weird I/O,
Correct.
>why not just recompile it to like x86 and use them on normal severs?
Most of this legacy software is closed source and can't be ported, and some of it is too platform specific for a port at all. Emulation would be slow, hence the need for a mainframe. There's also the issue of support contracts. You pay out the ass to IBM so that they're at fault when something fucks up, then they send out one of their technicians to fix it.
Josiah Watson
>why not just recompile it to like x86 and use them on normal severs?
IBM mainframes are more powerful than x86 for the task and more resilient