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Information about Ibm Mainframe

IBM mainframes
IBM 700/7000 series
IBM System/360
IBM System/370
IBM ESA/390
IBM zSeries
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SAS 8 on an IBM mainframe, seen here via one of its user interfaces, classic 3270 emulation.
IBM mainframes, though perceived as synonymous with mainframe computers in general due to their marketshare, are now technically and specifically IBM's line of business computers that can all trace their design evolution to the IBM System/360.

First and second generation

From 1952 into the late 1960s, IBM manufactured and marketed several large computer models, known as the IBM 700/7000 series. The first-generation 700s were based on vacuum tubes, while the later, second-generation 7000s used transistors. These machines established IBM's dominance in electronic data processing. IBM had two model categories: one (701, 704, 709, 7090, 7040) for engineering and scientific use, and one (702, 705, 7080, 7070, 7010) for commercial or data processing use. (In fact, by some counts, IBM actually had nine different and incompatible computing systems during that time.) IBM initially sold its computers without any software, expecting customers to write their own; programs were manually initiated, one at a time. This followed the model IBM had earlier established with their unit record equipment. Later, IBM provided compilers for the newly developed higher-level programming languages Fortran and COBOL. The need to make the most efficient use of these multi-million dollar machines led to the introduction of simple operating systems, or job monitors. The two categories, scientific and commercial, generally used common peripherals but had completely different instruction sets, and there were incompatibilities even within each category. As software became more complex and important, the cost of supporting it on so many different designs became burdensome.

The second generation products were a mainstay of IBM's business and IBM continued to make them for several years after the introduction of the System/360. (Some IBM 7094s remained in service into the 1980s.)

Smaller machines

Prior to System/360, IBM also sold computers smaller in scale that were not considered mainframes, though they were still bulky and expensive by modern standards. These included:
  • IBM 650 (vacuum tube logic, decimal architecture, business and scientific)
  • IBM RAMAC 305 (vacuum tube logic, first computer with disk storage; see: Early IBM disk storage)
  • IBM 1400 series (business data processing; very successful and many 1400 peripherals were used with the 360s)
  • IBM 1620 (decimal architecture, engineering, scientific, and education)
IBM had difficulty getting customers to upgrade from the smaller machines to the mainframes because so much software had to be rewritten. The 7010 was introduced in 1962 as a mainframe-sized 1410. The later Systems 360 and 370 could emulate the 1400 machines. A desk size machine with a different instruction set, the IBM 1130, was released concurrent with the System/360 to address the 1620's niche. It used the same EBCDIC character encoding as the 360 and was mostly programmed in Fortran, which was relatively easy to adapt to larger machines when necessary.

Midrange computer is a designation used by IBM for a class of computer systems which fall in between mainframes and microcomputers.

IBM System/360

All that changed with the announcement of the System/360 (S/360) in April, 1964[1]. The System/360 was a single series of compatible models for both commercial and scientific use. The number "360" suggested a "360 degree," or "all-around" computer system. System/360 incorporated features which had previously been present on only either the commercial line (such as decimal arithmetic and byte addressing) or the technical line (such as floating point arithmetic).[2] The System/360 was also the first computer in wide use to include dedicated hardware provisions for the use of operating systems. Among these were supervisor and application mode programs and instructions, as well as built-in memory protection facilities.[3] The new machine also had a larger address space than the older mainframes, 24 bits vs. a typical 18 bits.

The smaller models in the System/360 line (e.g. the 360/30) were intended to replace the 1400 series while providing an easier upgrade path to the larger 360s. To smooth the transition from second generation to the new line, IBM used the 360's microprogramming capability to emulate the more popular older models. Thus 360/30s with this added cost feature could run 1401 programs and the larger 360/65s could run 7094 programs. To run old programs, the 360 had to be halted and restarted in emulation mode. Many customers kept using their old software and one of the features of the later System/370 was the ability to switch to emulation mode and back under operating system control.

Operating systems for the System/360 family and its successors included OS/360 (with PCP, MFT, and MVT), BOS, TOS, DOS, and SVS. The original OS/360 and early MVS and VM/CMS versions did not include a copyright literal in the object code and therefore not protected by U.S. Copyright Laws and are available for free use.

The System/360 later evolved into the System/370, the System/390, the zSeries, and the System z9.

Today's Systems

Main article: System z9

Mainframes in General

Main article: mainframe computer

Processor units

Here are the different processors on a current IBM Mainframe and their different functions
  • CP, Central Processor : Core, Operation system processor
  • IFL, Integrated Facility for Linux : dedicated for Linux and VM (Virtual Machine)
  • ICF, Integrated Coupling Facility : For sysplex (system complex = assembly of several system) operations
  • SAP : System Assist Processor : Processor unit dedicated to Input Output operations
  • zAAP : System z9 Application Assist Processor : Dedicated for Java workloads
  • zIIP : System z9 Integrated Information Processor, designed to run certain key database workloads

Operating Systems

The primary operating systems in use on current IBM mainframes include z/OS (which followed MVS and OS/390), z/VM (previously VM/CMS), z/VSE, z/TPF, and Linux on zSeries. A few systems run MUSIC/SP and UTS (Mainframe UNIX). There are software-based emulators for the System/370, System/390, zSeries, and System z9 hardware, including FLEX-ES and the freely available Hercules emulator which runs under Linux and Microsoft Windows. As of mid-2007, Sine Nomine Associates expects to introduce OpenSolaris for IBM mainframes.[4]

Middleware

Current IBM mainframes run all the major enterprise transaction processing environments and databases, including CICS, IMS, WebSphere Application Server, DB2, and Oracle. In many cases these software subsystems can run on more than one mainframe operating system.

See also

References

  • Prasad, Nallur (1994). IBM Mainframes: Architecture and Design, 2nd ed. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media. ISBN 0-07-050691-4.[5]

External links

Notes

1. ^ IBM Archives: System/360 Announcement
2. ^ Some of the arithmetic units and addressing features were optional on some models of the System/360. However, models were upward compatible and most were also downward compatible.
3. ^ Hardware memory protection was provided to protect the operating system from the user programs (tasks) and the user tasks from each other.
4. ^ http://www.sinenomine.net/node/607, retrieved September 12, 2007.
5. ^ Now dated. For details on the significant 64-bit architectural changes, refer to IBM technical publications (see z/Architecture).
IBM mainframes, though perceived as synonymous with mainframe computers in general due to their marketshare, are now technically and specifically IBM's line of business computers that can all trace their design evolution to the IBM System/360.
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IBM 700/7000 series was a series of large scale (mainframe) computer systems made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series included several different, incompatible processor architectures.
..... Click the link for more information.
System/360 Model 65 operator's console, with register value lamps and toggle switches (middle of picture) and "emergency pull" switch (upper right).]] The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a mainframe computer system family announced by IBM on April 7, 1964.
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IBM System/370 (often: S/370) was a model range of IBM mainframes announced on June 30, 1970 as the successors to the System/360 family. The series maintained backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migration path for customers; this, plus improved
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IBM ESA/390 (Enterprise Systems Architecture/390) has been introduced in the September 1990[1] and is IBM's last 31-bit-address/32-bit-data mainframe computing design, copied by Amdahl, Hitachi, and Fujitsu among other competitors.
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IBM zSeries is a brand name of IBM which was designated to all IBM mainframes in 2000 with the e depicted in IBM's red trademarked symbol.

The IBM eServer zSeries line succeeded the IBM System/390 (S/390
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Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as Big Iron) are computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, ERP, and financial transaction processing.
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International Business Machines Corporation

Public (NYSE:  IBM )
Founded 1889, incorporated 1911
Headquarters Armonk, New York, USA

Key people Samuel J.
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System/360 Model 65 operator's console, with register value lamps and toggle switches (middle of picture) and "emergency pull" switch (upper right).]] The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a mainframe computer system family announced by IBM on April 7, 1964.
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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1920s  1930s  1940s  - 1950s -  1960s  1970s  1980s
1949 1950 1951 - 1952 - 1953 1954 1955

Year 1952 (MCMLII
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Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964
1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

- -
-

Their 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive.
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IBM 700/7000 series was a series of large scale (mainframe) computer systems made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series included several different, incompatible processor architectures.
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vacuum tube, electron tube (inside North America), thermionic valve, or just valve (elsewhere); is a device used to amplify, switch, otherwise modify, or create an electrical signal by controlling the movement of electrons in a low-pressure space, often not
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A transistor is a semiconductor device, commonly used as an amplifier or an electrically controlled switch. The transistor is the fundamental building block of the circuitry in computers, cellular phones, and all other modern electronic devices.
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unit record equipment, electric accounting machines (EAM) or tabulating machines. A data processing shop would have at least one of most of the machine types.
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A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages, like natural languagess, are defined by syntactic and semantic rules which describe their structure and meaning respectively.
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Fortran

Paradigm: multi-paradigm: procedural, imperative, structured, object-oriented
Appeared in: 1957
Designed by: John W. Backus
Developer: John W.
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COBOL
Paradigm: multi-paradigm
Appeared in: 1959
Designed by: Grace Hopper, William Selden, Gertrude Tierney, Howard Bromberg, Howard Discount, Vernon Reeves, Jean E.
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An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer. An operating system processes system data and user input, and responds by allocating and managing tasks and internal system resources as a service to users and programs of the
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instruction set is (a list of) all instructions, and all their variations, that a processor can execute.

Instructions include:
  • arithmetic such as add and subtract
  • logic instructions such as and, or, and not

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The IBM 7090 was a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computers and was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 was the third member of the IBM 700/7000 series scientific computers.
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IBM 650 ( photo ) was one of IBM’s early computers, and the world’s first mass-produced ( photo ) computer. It was announced in 1953, and over 2000 systems were produced between the first shipment in 1954 and its final manufacture in 1962.
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IBM 305 RAMAC was the first commercial computer that used a moving head hard disk drive (magnetic disk storage) for secondary storage. IBM introduced the storage unit on September 4, 1956 before unveiling the entire computer nine days later on September 13.
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IBM 350 was part of the IBM RAMAC 305, the computer that introduced disk storage technology to the world. IBM introduced the IBM 350 storage unit on September 4, 1956 before unveiling the entire RAMAC 305 computer nine days later on September 13.
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The IBM 1400 series were second generation (transistorized) mid-range business computers that IBM sold in the early 1960s. They could be operated as an independent systems, in conjunction with IBM punched card equipment, or as auxiliary equipment to other computer systems.
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The IBM 1620 was announced by IBM on October 21, 1959 and marketed as an inexpensive "scientific computer". After a total production of about two thousand machines, it was withdrawn on November 19, 1970.
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The IBM 1130 Computing System was introduced in 1965. It was IBM's least-expensive computer to date, and was aimed at price-sensitive, computing-intensive technical markets like education and engineering.
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"Midrange computer" is a designation used by IBM for a class of computer systems which fall in between mainframes and microcomputers.

IBM has made several models of midrange computers
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360 (three hundred and sixty) is the natural number following 359 and preceding 361.

In mathematics

  • Divisors are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 72, 90, 120, 180 and 360. (A total of 24 divisors.

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degree (in full, a degree of arc, arc degree, or arcdegree), usually denoted by ° (the degree symbol), is a measurement of plane angle, representing 1⁄360 of a full rotation.
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