The very term “mainframe computers” brings to mind data scientists in lab coats shuffling punch cards and smoking cigarettes, but don’t let that get to you. Despite decades of technology evangelists calling for the death of the ancient mainframe machine, the world still loves its room-sized, multi-million dollar computers. And in this realm, unsurprisingly, IBM is king.Over half a century after it started producing vacuum tube-powered supercomputers, Big Blue just released its newest mainframe, the zEnterprise EC12. Like its predecessors, the zEnterprise EC12 excels at processing massive amounts of data and reliably processing millions upon millions of transactions. These kinds of computers are favored by banking and telecommunications companies and capable of doing anything any other modern computer could do, including cloud computing, flash-memory storage and green computing.This didn’t come cheap, either. Over the past three years, IBM estimates that it spent $1 billion developing its the latest flagship of its mainframe line, but it also expects to make that back handily. Indeed, a single mainframe computer costs about $1 million, though the more sophisticated models can be as much as $10 million with all of the buttons and bells. At those prices, these machines are a boon for IBM’s bottom line. Though the sale of mainframe computers themselves only make up 4 percent of IBM’s revenue, the related business like software and servers account for more than 40 percent of the company’s profits. They’re also invaluable pieces of the information business infrastructure. Said one chief information officer to The New York Times, “It works like nothing else.”It wasn’t always like this. In the mainframe’s early days, the 1950s, IBM sold the first era of mainframes to businesses that didn’t even know they needed them. The first order was for only 18 computers, the IBM 701. It goes without saying that these machines were hardly the Internet-equipped, performance machines that they are today. The IBM 701, the company’s first commercial scientific computer, used Williams vacuum tubes for memory and came without any software installed. (The users were expected to write their own.) They cost $2 million a piece back then, a sum equivalent to about $17 million of today’s money.The 1960s saw major advances in mainframe computer design thanks to the introduction of the transistor. Known as the 7000 series, this next generation was about five times faster than the top end of the previous series, the 709. The new version of that machine was the 7090, the computer that NASA would later use to control the Mercury and Gemini space flights. (For the Apollo missions, they upgraded to the 7094.) Then, in 1964, IBM released System/360 which, as the name implies, was built to be an all-around computer. These systems finally came with an operating system, and DOS made its first appearance along with a few other options. It could also emulate earlier models which made it easier for customers to upgrade.IBM’s System/360 remained a mainstay in the mainframe world into the 1970s. The next generation, System/370, made virtual memory standard with the introduction of the floppy disk. Memory and storage upgrades kept the model numbers rising throughout the decade, until the 1980s when IBM introduced System/390. At this point in time, pretty much every other computer manufacturer followed IBM’s lead in the mainframe computer market, copying the all-around computer idea.It was also around this time that personal computing started elbowing in on the mainframe’s market space, leading many to wonder if we might just do all of our computing on desktop machines in the future. The 1980s was the decade of the personal computer In 1991, venture capitalist Stewart Alsop said, “I predict that the last mainframe will be unplugged on March 15, 1996.” And indeed the mainframe industry did slip as consumer computing took center stage. At least one person, Computerworld columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols credits the turnaround to IBM’s introducing Linux into their mainframe business in 1999. Since then IBM’s been one of the biggest proponents of the Linux operating system, and Linux has made it easy for IBM’s customers to keep using their mainframes.At the end of the day, mainframes are supercomputers, designed to be the fastest and most powerful machines on the market. Sure, your new MacBook Pro runs Final Cut with some fierce confidence. But it’s never going to be able to reliably handle billions of transactions coming in from all over the world. You have to pay a premium for that kind of performance, and IBM would be happy to take your money.
Advertisement
Advertisement