What Do IBM Mainframe Computers Look Like Today?

The big news in tech stocks last week was IBM’s earnings which led to speculation that the “turnaround of IBM” has finally arrived which would signal that their CEO, Ginni Rometty, is finally making things happen after a lackluster attempt so far. While we’re shareholders in IBM (NYSE:IBM) for dividend growth reasons, we did take notice of a statement made in their earnings call by Mrs. Rometty which said the following:

There was enthusiastic adoption of IBM’s new z Systems mainframe, which delivers breakthrough security capabilities to our clients.

The first thing we thought when we read that statement was why are we still talking about mainframes? Aren’t these supposed to be giant old archaic machines covered in dust that are soon to be replaced by blazing fast server racks powered by NVIDIA GPUs? We needed to sort these misconceptions out fast, so we had one of our MBAs do some digging to find out just what the word “mainframe” means today and what the mainframe computer is being used for.

What is a Mainframe Today?

Mainframes have been around since the 1950s, so we’ll spare you the boring timeline of what transpired over the years. One thing that has stayed the same over time is that these large computers have always been able to process a large volume of secure transactions reliably (they can run for a decade without needing a reboot). Mainframes are not supercomput