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Supercomputers are the fastest and largest general-purpose computers avail able at any point in time (Lax 1982). A. M. Turing showed (Turing 1936) that all digital computers are equivalent; a computation performed on one computer can be performed on any other computer. However, Turing's proof does not address time. Problems requiring days on a personal com puter take hours on a minicomputer or minutes on a mainframe. A super computer could further reduce the time, to seconds. These four families of computer systems are optimized for different goals. The personal computer provides low capability (although dedicated to the user) and can be acquired at low cost. The minicomputer is mod erately costly and provides significant computational capability as well as a selection of peripheral equipment. High-volume manufacturing techniques have resulted in economies of scale for personal computers and mini computers, yielding a high capability-to-cost ratio. In contrast, mainframe computers offer higher speed and the largest breadth of capability, at higher cost. Mainframe computers feature applications libraries covering 13 8756--7016/90/1 115-0013$02.00 SCHNECK many different industries, and specialized peripheral equipment to meet almost any business need. These systems support transaction processing configurations with an emphasis on high availability and redundancy.
Annual Review of Computer Science – Annual Reviews
Published: Jun 1, 1990
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