Supermini

A supermini (formally super-minicomputer) was the name for a category of mid-sized computers which were, as the name implies, more powerful than a traditional minicomputer, but were not as large or as powerful as a mainframe. They had a brief period of popularity, before personal computers took over the world. They were typically 32-bit computers; usually used in time-sharing mode.

About the earliest, and very successful, one was the VAX-11/780 from DEC, but the Data General Eclipse MV was another early one. The supermini was soon obsoleted during the late 1980s by smaller and faster microcomputer-based machines, to the great distress to manufacturers like DEC.

See also

• Power 6/32