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Mainframe computer A 1990 Honeywell-Bull DPS 7 mainframe CPU Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as big iron) are large and "expensive" computers used mainly by government institutions and large companies for mission critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as censuses, industry/consumer statistics, ERP, and bank transaction processing. The term during the early 1970s with the introduction of smaller, less complex computers such as the DEC PDP series, which became known as minicomputers or just minis. …

…the time of introduction, the Earth Simulator's performance was over five times that of the previous fastest supercomputer, the cluster computer ASCI White at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The Earth Simulator held the #1 position for 2½ years. Because it was largely unanticipated by the top performers at the time, its introduction spawned the term "computnik," in a reference to the Soviet Union's upstaging of the Western space program with the 1957 launch of Sputnik.