Classification of Computers
Classification of Computers
Classification of Computers
1. Super computers : The super computers are the most high performing
system. A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance
compared to a general-purpose computer. The actual Performance of a
supercomputer is measured in FLOPS instead of MIPS. All of the world’s
fastest 500 supercomputers run Linux-based operating systems. Additional
research is being conducted in China, the US, the EU, Taiwan and Japan to
build even faster, more high performing and more technologically superior
supercomputers. Supercomputers actually play an important role in the field
of computation, and are used for intensive computation tasks in various
fields, including quantum mechanics, weather forecasting, climate research,
oil and gas exploration, molecular modeling, and physical simulations. and
also Throughout the history, supercomputers have been essential in the field
of the cryptanalysis.
eg: PARAM, jaguar, roadrunner.
2. Mainframe computers : These are commonly called as big iron, they are
usually used by big organisations for bulk data processing such as statistics,
census data processing, transaction processing and are widely used as the
servers as these systems has a higher processing capability as compared to
the other classes of computers, most of these mainframe architectures were
established in 1960s, the research and development worked continuously
over the years and the mainframes of today are far more better than the
earlier ones, in size, capacity and efficiency.
Eg: IBM z Series, System z9 and System z10 servers.
3. Mini computers : These computers came into the market in mid 1960s and
were sold at a much cheaper price than the main frames, they were actually
designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and
communication switching as distinct from calculation and record keeping,
later they became very popular for personal uses with evolution.
In the 60s to describe the smaller computers that became possible with the
use of transistors and core memory technologies, minimal instructions sets
and less expensive peripherals such as the ubiquitous Teletype Model 33
ASR.They usually took up one or a few inch rack cabinets, compared with
the large mainframes that could fill a room, there was a new term
“MINICOMPUTERS” coined
Eg: Personal Laptop, PC etc.
1. Servers : Servers are nothing but dedicated computers which are set-up to
offer some services to the clients. They are named depending on the type of
service they offered. Eg: security server, database server.