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Chapter Profile
Clickipedia
A server is also a computer that provides data and other services to other computers. It is
used in offices where many computers are connected with each other.
Mainframe Computers
Mainframe computers are very large, fast, powerful
and more expensive than the minicomputers.
They can have multiple microprocessors as their
processing unit.
Mainframe computers are generally used in big
organisations where large amounts of data
is used such as banks. Examples of mainframe
computers are IBM zSeries, IBM 4381, ICL 39, etc.
Mainframe Computer
Supercomputers
Supercomputers are the largest and fastest of all
types of computers. Even some supercomputers
require much space as that of a floor of a building.
The cost of supercomputer is very high. They can
process very large amounts of data quickly.
They are used in very big organisations and
government departments to do tasks such as
weather forecasting and rocket launching. PARAM
Supercomputer was India’s first supercomputer developed in
1991. Some other examples of supercomputers are PACE, Titan, Sunway TaihuLight, Pratyush,
Mihir, etc.
SOME OTHER SPECIAL COMPUTERS
Apart from the types of computers that we have discussed in the previous sections, some other
types of computers are embedded computers and handheld computers. Let us learn about these
computers in detail.
Embedded Computers
An embedded computer is a special type of microprocessor based system that is developed for
performing a specific task. Let us learn about some of the embedded computers in detail.
Categories of Computers 9

