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IBM Minicomputers
Midrange computers, or midrange systems, were a class of computer systems that fell in between mainframe computers and microcomputers. This class of machine emerged in the 1960s, with models from Digital Equipment Corporation ( PDP lines), Data General ( NOVA), and Hewlett-Packard (HP 2100 and HP 3000) widely used in science and research as well as for business - and referred to as minicomputers. IBM favored the term "midrange computer" for their comparable, but more business-oriented systems. IBM midrange systems * System/3 (1969) was the first IBM midrange system. * System/32 (introduced in 1975) was a 16-bit single-user system also known as the IBM 5320. * System/34 (1977) was intended to be a successor to both the 3 and the 32. It had two 16-bit processors and ran the SSP operating system. * System/38 (1979) was the first midrange system to have an integrated relational database management system (DBMS). The S/38 had 48-bit addressing, and ran the CPF operating sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM System3 (1)
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is a publicly traded company and one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries; for 29 consecutive years, from 1993 to 2021, it held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business. IBM was founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems. It was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924 and soon became the leading manufacturer of Tabulating machine, punch-card tabulating systems. During the 1960s and 1970s, the IBM mainframe, exemplified by the IBM System/360, System/360 and its successors, wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
System/38
The System/38 is a discontinued minicomputer and midrange computer manufactured and sold by IBM. The system was announced in 1978. The System/38 has 48-bit computing, 48-bit addressing, which was unique for the time, and a novel database#Integrated approach, integrated database system. It was oriented toward a multi-user system environment. At the time, the typical system handled from a dozen to several dozen Computer terminal, terminals. Although the System/38 failed to displace the systems it was intended to replace, its architecture served as the basis of the much more successful IBM AS/400. History The System/38 was introduced on October 24, 1978 and delivered in 1980. Developed under the code-name "Pacific", it was made commercially available in August 1979. The system was designed by a number of engineers including Frank Soltis and Glenn Henry (IT entrepreneur), Glenn Henry and offered a number of innovative features. The architecture shared many similarities with the design ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Business Applications
Business software (or a business application) is any software or set of computer programs used by business users to perform various business functions. These business applications are used to increase productivity, measure productivity, and perform other business functions accurately. Overview Much business software is developed to meet the needs of a specific business, and therefore is not easily transferable to a different business environment, unless its nature and operation are identical. Due to the unique requirements of each business, off-the-shelf software is unlikely to completely address a company's needs. However, where an on-the-shelf solution is necessary, due to time or monetary considerations, some level of customization is likely to be required. Exceptions do exist, depending on the business in question, and thorough research is always required before committing to bespoke or off-the-shelf solutions. Some business applications are interactive, i.e., they have a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floating-point
In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a Sign (mathematics), signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some Radix, base) multiplied by an integer power of that base. Numbers of this form are called floating-point numbers. For example, the number 2469/200 is a floating-point number in base ten with five digits: 2469/200 = 12.345 = \! \underbrace_\text \! \times \! \underbrace_\text\!\!\!\!\!\!\!\overbrace^ However, 7716/625 = 12.3456 is not a floating-point number in base ten with five digits—it needs six digits. The nearest floating-point number with only five digits is 12.346. And 1/3 = 0.3333… is not a floating-point number in base ten with any finite number of digits. In practice, most floating-point systems use Binary number, base two, though base ten (decimal floating point) is also common. Floating-point arithmetic operations, such as addition and division, approximate the correspond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superminicomputer
A superminicomputer, colloquially supermini, is a high-end minicomputer. The term is used to distinguish the emerging 32-bit architecture midrange computers introduced in the mid to late 1970s from the classical 16-bit systems that preceded them. The development of these computers was driven by the need of applications to address larger memory. The term midicomputer had been used earlier to refer to these systems. Virtual memory was often an additional criteria that was considered for inclusion in this class of system. The computational speed of these machines was significantly greater than the 16-bit minicomputers and approached the performance of small mainframe computers. The name has at times been described as a "frivolous" term created by "marketeers" that lacks a specific definition. Describing a class of system has historically been seen as problematic: "In the computer kingdom, taxonomic classification of equipment is more of a black art than a science." There is some disa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM System P
The IBM System p is a high-end line of RISC ( Power)/UNIX-based servers. It was the successor of the RS/6000 line, and predecessor of the IBM Power Systems server series. History The previous RS/6000 line was originally a line of workstations and servers. The first System p server line was named the ''e''Server pSeries in 2000 as part of the e-Server branding initiative. In 2004, with the advent of the POWER5 processor, the server family was rebranded the ''e''Server p5. In 2005, following IBM's move to streamline its server and storage brands worldwide, and incorporating the "System" brand with the Systems Agenda, the family was again renamed to System p5. The System p5 now encompassed the IBM OpenPower product line. In 2007, after the introduction of the POWER6 processor models, the last rename under the System p brand dropped the p (numbered) designation. In April 2008, IBM announced a rebranding of the System p and its unification with the mid-range System i platform ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM AS/400
The IBM AS/400 (Application System/400) is a family of midrange computers from IBM announced in June 1988 and released in August 1988. It was the successor to the System/36 and System/38 platforms, and ran the OS/400 operating system. Lower-cost but more powerful than its predecessors, an estimated 111,000 installations existed by the end of 1990 and annual revenue reaching $14 billion that year, increasing to 250,000 systems by 1994, and about 500,000 shipped by 1997. A key concept in the AS/400 platform is IBM i#TIMI, Technology Independent Machine Interface (TIMI), a platform-independent instruction set architecture (ISA) that is translated to native machine language instructions. The platform has used this capability to change the underlying processor architecture without breaking application compatibility. Early systems were based on a 48-bit Complex instruction set computer, CISC instruction set architecture known as the ''Internal Microprogrammed Interface'' (IMPI), original ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM Power Systems
IBM Power Systems is a family of server computers from IBM that are based on its Power processors. It was created in 2008 as a merger of the System p and System i product lines. History IBM had two distinct POWER- and PowerPC-based hardware lines since the early 1990s: * Servers running processors based on the IBM PowerPC-AS architecture in the AS/400 family (later known as iSeries, then System i) running OS/400 (later known as i5/OS, and now IBM i) * Servers and workstations using POWER and PowerPC processors in the RS/6000 family (later known as pSeries, then System p), running IBM AIX and Linux on Power. After the introduction of the POWER4 processor in 2001, there was little difference between both the "p" and the "i" hardware; the only differences were in the software and services offerings. With the introduction of the POWER5 processor in 2004, even the product numbering was synchronized. The ''System i5 570'' was virtually identical to the ''System p5 570''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
OS/400
IBM i (the ''i'' standing for ''integrated'') is an operating system developed by IBM for IBM Power Systems. It was originally released in 1988 as OS/400, as the sole operating system of the IBM AS/400 line of systems. It was renamed to i5/OS in 2004, before being renamed a second time to IBM i in 2008. It is an evolution of the System/38 CPF operating system, with compatibility layers for System/36 SSP and AIX applications. It inherits a number of distinctive features from the System/38 platform, including the Machine Interface which provides hardware independence, the implementation of object-based addressing on top of a single-level store, and the tight integration of a relational database into the operating system. History Origin OS/400 was developed alongside the AS/400 hardware platform beginning in December 1985. Development began in the aftermath of the failure of the Fort Knox project, which left IBM without a competitive midrange system. During the Fort Knox pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AS/400
The IBM AS/400 (Application System/400) is a family of midrange computers from IBM announced in June 1988 and released in August 1988. It was the successor to the System/36 and System/38 platforms, and ran the OS/400 operating system. Lower-cost but more powerful than its predecessors, an estimated 111,000 installations existed by the end of 1990 and annual revenue reaching $14 billion that year, increasing to 250,000 systems by 1994, and about 500,000 shipped by 1997. A key concept in the AS/400 platform is Technology Independent Machine Interface (TIMI), a platform-independent instruction set architecture (ISA) that is translated to native machine language instructions. The platform has used this capability to change the underlying processor architecture without breaking application compatibility. Early systems were based on a 48-bit CISC instruction set architecture known as the ''Internal Microprogrammed Interface'' (IMPI), originally developed for the System/38. In 1991, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
System/36
The IBM System/36 (often abbreviated as S/36) was a midrange computer marketed by IBM from 1983 to 2000 - a multi-user, Computer multitasking, multi-tasking successor to the IBM System/34, System/34. Like the System/34 and the older IBM System/32, System/32, the System/36 was primarily programmed in the IBM RPG, RPG II language. One of the machine's optional features was an off-line storage mechanism (on the 5360 model) that utilized "magazines" – boxes of 8-inch Floppy disk, floppies that the machine could load and eject in a nonsequential fashion. The System/36 also had many mainframe features such as programmable job queues and scheduling priority levels. While these systems were similar to other manufacturer's minicomputers, IBM themselves described the System/32, System/34 and System/36 as "small systems" and later as midrange computers along with the IBM System/38, System/38 and succeeding IBM AS/400 range. The AS/400 series and IBM Power Systems running IBM i can ru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
