Supercomputers VS mainframes

Supercomputers

Very complex to program

Complicated calculations in memory

Exploit parallelism with thousand of processors

Scientific, military and engineeting research

Problemas limited by a computational speed

Mainframes

Parallelism ``hidden´´ to the programmer

Simple calculations with external big data

Several dozen processors

Administration, companies...

Problems limited by I/O devices and reliability

Servers: definition

Software

a progra that offers a special service that other programs called clients can use

Hardware

physical machine integrated in a computer network in which, in addition to the operating system, one or more software-based servers operate

Types

Any computer can be a server

It is the role of the computer that defines it as a server

Servers provide essential services within a network, either for private users within an organization or company, or for public users over the Internet

The most common types of servers are:

Database server

file server

mail server

print server

Web server

game server

application server

Workstations

In computing a workstation us a high-performance computer intended for technical or scientific work. In a computer that makes it easy for people to access the servers and peripherals of the network