mainframe n.
Term originally referring to the cabinet containing the
central processor unit or `main frame' of a room-filling Stone Age batch machine. After the
emergence of smaller `minicomputer' designs in the early 1970s,
the traditional big iron
machines were described as `mainframe computers' and eventually
just as mainframes. The term carries the connotation of a machine
designed for batch rather than interactive use, though possibly
with an interactive timesharing operating system retrofitted onto
it; it is especially used of machines built by IBM, Unisys, and
the other great dinosaurs
surviving from computing's Stone
Age.
It has been common wisdom among hackers since the late 1980s
that the mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead
(outside of the tiny market for number-crunching supercomputers (see
cray)), having been swamped by the
recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost personal
computing. The wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers among
traditional mainframe makers in the early 1990s bore this out.
The biggest mainframer of all, IBM, was compelled to re-invent
itself as a huge systems-consulting house. (See dinosaurs mating and killer micro).