Running head: COMPARE AND CONTRAST PC'S AND MAINFRAMES

Compare and Contrast PC's and Mainframes David Story POS 355

COMPARE AND CONTRAST PC'S AND MAINFRAMES Compare and Contrast PC's and Mainframes

Mainframes and the personal computers technology has changed over the years but their main functions have stayed the same. The mainframe can handle multiple users and vast amounts of data for big companies, like UPS or IRS, while the personal computer is generally used for one user or a couple of family members that download music or watch YouTube Videos. Some of the changes through the years have been size and speed. Mainframes use to take up the space of a building, and now can be the same size as desktop computer. Personal computers origins came from the mind of Vannever Bush in 1945 in an essay called As We May Think. Later in 1968, Douglas Engelbart gave a preview of how the personal computer would become our daily staple in the 21st century; but before the personal computer, the dumb terminal was used to access the mainframe. The hardware for the mainframe and personal computer are very similar, and their architecture has stayed the same over the years. While the complexities of the mainframe and the personal computers have changed, their components are still the same. They both have processors, hard drives, memory, operating systems, and displays. Mainframes and the personal computer both have memory and hard drives, their operating systems are optimized for I/O access, but both systems have the same issue with I/O. When I/O is slow and time consuming, like transfer or access to information, other processes can run while waiting for the first process I/O to finish. Over the last 10 years, mainframes and personal computers have become very similar, like the size and speed of the systems. Mainframes were and still are a valuable tool for big organizations, because of the speed in which it can access data. They can access more address

COMPARE AND CONTRAST PC'S AND MAINFRAMES space than a personal computer. Twenty years ago DOS had a memory cap of one megabyte, while Mainframes could access many times more than the DOS limit. This helped big organizations with processing large amounts of data quickly. Speed was valuable to big organizations then the cost cost. Accessing megabytes data is no longer a sole benefit of a

mainframe. No the main benefit of the mainframes computer is security and ease of maintenance. In the future, the mainframe computer and the personal computer will be the same size and very affordable. Operating systems for the personal computer and mainframe are very different. The mainframes operating system is more complex and cannot run on a personal computer; this is for the multiuser support, security, stability that is provided by the mainframe. Resetting or rebooting a mainframe does not happen as often as it does with a personal computer. This is because a mainframe needs less maintenance than a personal computer. The mainframe supports many users, and is a true multitasking computer. Multiple processors in a mainframe are needed to handle the vast amount of data sent to the mainframe for processing. Multiple processors in a mainframe are standard components, and for personal computer multiple processors are become the norm, from 2 to 12 on one cpu. The multiple processers in a mainframe helps to maintain stability, because the second processor can be used in case of a failure in the main processor. Stability and performance is expected from the mainframe and not so much for a personal computer. The mainframe is also expected to run 24 hours a day 7 days a week without any problems or downtime. The mainframe does not stop working even when everyone goes home, because it will continue to process data for the organization.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST PC'S AND MAINFRAMES Conclusion

The mainframes and Personal computer were drastically different in size and speed when they first appeared. The first mainframe took up several buildings and the personal computer was just a terminal to a mainframe. Today, their similarities are growing, that eventually we will not be able to tell the difference between the two. As the cost and size of the mainframes comes down, the average consumer in need of speed and security of their data will be able to afford one.

Reference: http://www.mainframes.com/whatis.htm http://home.ubalt.edu/tdarling/puad626_share/Vaskevitch/chap08.html http://www.infopackets.com/news/hardware/2008/20080229_the_return_of_the_mainfra me.htm