CLASSIFICATION OF COMPUTERS BY SIZE

DATA PROCESSING SSS1 FIRST TERM

WEEK 6

CLASSIFICATION OF COMPUTERS BY SIZE

Contents

Computers can be generally categorized into four, namely:

1. Supercomputers
2. Mainframe computers
3. Mini computers
4. Microcomputers

 SUPER COMPUTER

These are the largest, fastest and most expensive computers. The cost is several millions of dollars and the speed is between 600 million to 900 million instructions per second (MIP).

Another name for supercomputers is MONSTER. Scientists in weather forecasting, and exploration make use of supercomputers. It can also be used for complex calculations e.g CRAY, X-MP etc.

MAINFRAME COMPUTERS

A mainframe computer is a large computer in terms of price, size of internal memory and speed. It has a variety of peripheral devices such as printers, plotters etc more than…