I’ve never worked with major enterprise or government systems where there’s aging mainframes — the type that get parodied for running COBOL. So, I’m completely ignorant, although fascinated. Are they power hogs? Are they wildly cheap to run? Are they even run as they were back in the day?
Modern hardware designed to run ancient software. Not all that special.
An older example that’s popular still is the as400. IBM replaced these but a lot of businesses refuse to acknowledge that and maintain these beasts sometimes paying more for parts than MSRP.
Interesting article that’s related.
https://www.gao.gov/blog/outdated-and-old-it-systems-slow-government-and-put-taxpayers-risk
A lot, just like today’s Mainframe and Super computers. They are calculating complex formulas and doing gigantic batch jobs, millisecond AI fraud detection etc. A regular computer or server will throttle a lot while they are designed to be loaded 100% of times. Dave Plummer of MS recently made a video of a 40TB RAM monster.
Did you ever look at how much today’s top of the line gaming rigs consume? ;-)