Even though this “cloud architecture” is decentralized in terms of hardware, it has given rise to application-level centralization (e.g. Over time, Internet and cloud computing architectures enabled global access from a variety of computing devices whereas mainframes were largely designed to address the needs of large corporations and governments. This data could replicate from server to server, and subsets of the data could be accessed and processed on clients, and then, synced back to the server. Massive data sets, which are housed on mainframes, could move onto a distributed architecture. ![]() This, in part, gave rise to the “client-server” architecture, which supported the development of relational database systems. With the advent of personal computers and private networks, similar computational capabilities were now housed both on the clients, as well as the servers. Access to mainframes is mainly by “dumb terminals”, which only take inputs and outputs, and do not store or process data. ![]() They typically house all computing power, memory, data storage, and code. ![]() Mainframe computers are largely centralized. Looking back to the last half century of computer technologies and architectures, one may observe a trend of fluctuation between the centralization and subsequent decentralization of computing power, storage, infrastructure, protocols, and code.
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