Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A large powerful computer, often serving many connected terminals and usually used by large complex organizations.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Computers) A large digital computer serving 100-400 users and occupying a special air-conditioned room. At any given point in development of computer technology, the
mainframe will be faster, have large main memeory, and be more capable than aminicomputer , which will in turn be faster and more capable than apersonal computer . The typical personal computer in 1999 is faster than amainframe was in 1970. - noun The board holding the CPU and the memory forming the central part of a computer to which the peripherals are attached.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun computer hardware A large,
powerful computer able tomanage very manysimultaneous tasks andcommunicate with very many connectedterminals ; used by large,complex organizations (such asbanks andsupermarkets ) wherecontinuously sustained operation isvital
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a large digital computer serving 100-400 users and occupying a special air-conditioned room
- noun (computer science) the part of a computer (a microprocessor chip) that does most of the data processing
Etymologies
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Examples
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The Human Mainframe: We always knew that Rossum had ill intentions, but the revelation that the Attic's use of human brains to propel the corporation's mainframe is pretty messed up — especially when that power is generated by nightmares that include eating your own severed legs and watching your friends die on an endless loop.
‘Dollhouse’ Episode 2.09 & 2.10 Recaps: ‘Stop-Loss’ & ‘The Attic’ » MTV Movies Blog 2009
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“The mainframe is in sub basement four,” Davin said from behind Rose.
Hunger Moon: Chapter Sixteen amberfocus 2008
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“Mr. DeVries … The report on the 2 hour outage of our mainframe is complete.”
365 tomorrows » 2008 » April : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2008
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System 360 turns 40 – 70 percent of the world’s data are still housed in mainframe computers … [via]
System 360 turns 40 2004
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System 360 turns 40 – 70 percent of the world’s data are still housed in mainframe computers … [via]
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If it existed outside a computer mainframe, that is.
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I would argue that the successor to the mainframe was the mini.
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IBM is aiming its hybrid mainframe, which is designed to manage other systems too, at the datacentre simplification effort.
ZDNet UK Highlights 2010
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IBM is aiming its hybrid mainframe, which is designed to manage other systems too, at the data center simplification effort.
CNET News.com 2010
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It's been three years engineering the latest generation of its so-called mainframe-borrowing X-Architecture.
bilby commented on the word mainframe
Now WeirdNET is looking after climatic conditions in the office.
May 31, 2008