Actually, the thing that S390 does best is I/O, a mainframe is total designed to increase I/O to disks, they even have seperate harware subsystem to manage the I/O so the CPU doesn't have to do it. Its just a fundamental difference between workstations(All Unix boxes)and PCs in comparision to Mainframes. Check out the ibm article for a very good explanation of the differences between a mainframe and a unix box http://www.s390.ibm.com/marketing/gf225122.html
Ok, i know this is from IBM's Marketing department but it does a good job of describing the differences between a unix (or a pc) and a Mainframe system. Its not the processing power, its the IO bandwidth. A PC or Most Unix boxes aren't even close. i'm not saying its the end all be all of computers but for what its used for, Lots and Lots of Transactions and no downtime and thats 99.9999% uptime. http://www.s390.ibm.com/marketing/gf225122.html
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Actually, the thing that S390 does best is I/O, a mainframe is total designed to increase I/O to disks, they even have seperate harware subsystem to manage the I/O so the CPU doesn't have to do it. Its just a fundamental difference between workstations(All Unix boxes)and PCs in comparision to Mainframes. Check out the ibm article for a very good explanation of the differences between a mainframe and a unix box http://www.s390.ibm.com/marketing/gf225122.html
Ok, i know this is from IBM's Marketing department but it does a good job of describing the differences between a unix (or a pc) and a Mainframe system. Its not the processing power, its the IO bandwidth. A PC or Most Unix boxes aren't even close. i'm not saying its the end all be all of computers but for what its used for, Lots and Lots of Transactions and no downtime and thats 99.9999% uptime. http://www.s390.ibm.com/marketing/gf225122.html