I think I'd say that mainframe, minicomputers, and micros started out as a division of all of technology, form factor, and usage, but this joint division was only valid through the 1970s when single-chip CPUs were not very good. As single-chip CPUs improved their capabilities through the 1980s, everything came to be built with them, erasing the technology distinction and leaving behind only an increasingly blurred usage and form factor distinction. Effectively by the late 1980s minicomputers as such were mostly dead, replaced almost entirely with 'servers' (implemented almost entirely with single-chip CPUs), and CPUs had gotten so capable that there were no classical micros left.
This replacement included classical minicomputer companies like DEC. DEC still sold server VAXes, but they were increasingly implemented with single-chip VAX CPUs, not with discreet components (although I think they remained physically big). And these single-chip VAX CPUs let DEC make VAX workstations that had the small form factor of Sun, SGI, and so on workstations, a form factor that wasn't possible with 'minicomputer' discreet components. At one point we had both DEC Ultrix VAX and MIPS workstations, and you mostly couldn't tell them apart from the outside.
In the 1990s, the rising tide of x86 capability and volume erased any remaining hardware advantage that Unix vendors had, first in workstation size machines and then later in server ones. By the end of the 1990s, x86 desktop machines were objectively better and cheaper than Unix vendor workstations for anything except expensive, high end graphics work. In 1999, we evaluated replacements for 1996 era SGI Indys and x86 desktops running Linux crushed the competition (to a degree that was sad to see), even with Sun's workstations of the era using a lot of PC hardware interfaces and hardware. And obviously in the modern era the 'minicomputer' form factor is pretty much dead because you can get a very powerful machine into the small '1U' rack form factor.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-10-07 10:11 pm (UTC)This replacement included classical minicomputer companies like DEC. DEC still sold server VAXes, but they were increasingly implemented with single-chip VAX CPUs, not with discreet components (although I think they remained physically big). And these single-chip VAX CPUs let DEC make VAX workstations that had the small form factor of Sun, SGI, and so on workstations, a form factor that wasn't possible with 'minicomputer' discreet components. At one point we had both DEC Ultrix VAX and MIPS workstations, and you mostly couldn't tell them apart from the outside.
In the 1990s, the rising tide of x86 capability and volume erased any remaining hardware advantage that Unix vendors had, first in workstation size machines and then later in server ones. By the end of the 1990s, x86 desktop machines were objectively better and cheaper than Unix vendor workstations for anything except expensive, high end graphics work. In 1999, we evaluated replacements for 1996 era SGI Indys and x86 desktops running Linux crushed the competition (to a degree that was sad to see), even with Sun's workstations of the era using a lot of PC hardware interfaces and hardware. And obviously in the modern era the 'minicomputer' form factor is pretty much dead because you can get a very powerful machine into the small '1U' rack form factor.