What is "the Mainframe"?

Honestly I do not have a single answer for it. I got triggered by the post by Thomas Schwaerzl below which I saw Today and it made me think. Is the mainframe modern? Is the mainframe old? What is the mainframe?

So what is the mainframe?

Let's start with the definition IBM uses for the mainframe

At their core,?mainframes?are high-performance computers with large amounts of memory and processors that process billions of simple calculations and transactions in real time. The mainframe is critical to commercial databases, transaction servers, and applications that require high?resiliency,?security?and?agility.        

This matches with the answer chatgpt provided. We could as well say in simple worlds a big, powerful and robust computer. From what I learned and already wrote about in previous posts, it is not only one big computer, the mainframe enables its customers to make multiple computers out of one physical box and let them shape it to their needs and share and reuse resources based on their needs and goals.

In addition it is old. IBM started the mainframe in the 50's. Of course the mainframe we have Today is no longer the mainframe that existed in the 50's or 60's and 70's. But the name stayed the same. I would say the mainframe is as well new.

Over all of the years of existence IBM rethought the mainframe and the concept behind the mainframe based on the need of it's customers and the direction of the market. You can run use the mainframe to run existing, proven, secure and stable customer applications written years ago or you can as well use the mainframe to build your new microservice or event driven architecture based application. For me this means the mainframe does not define what you run on it, this is defined by the person, organisation running the mainframe. The mainframe itself provides you with the options to choose the option fitting best.

As I started for me there is no single answer to the answer what the mainframe is. For me it is combination of hardware and software starting to fuel my interest with every piece I learn from it. Yes it exists for a long time, but the platform itself did not stay still, but continuously improved and modernised itself. As it can be seen in the Secure Execution based Confidential Computing capabilities, the Quantum Safe Algorithms already available or the AI infusion on the chip. How a mainframe looks like and some internals can be seen in this video by Linus Tech Tips.

So what do you think is the mainframe? Please send me a message or put a comment below the post.