WEEK 2

First Generation (1940-1950) :: Vacuum Tube

•ENIAC [1945]: Designed by Mauchly & Echert, built by US army to calculate trajectories for ballistic shells during Worls War II. Around 18000 vacuum tubes and 1500 relays were used to build ENIAC, and it was programmed by manually setting switches

•UNIVAC [1950]: the first commercial computer

•John Von Neumann architecture: Goldstine and Von Neumann took the idea of ENIAC and developed concept of storing a program in the memory. Known as the Von Neumann's architecture and has been the basis for virtually every machine designed since then.

•Features:

–Electron emitting devices

–Data and programs are stored in a single read-write memory

–Memory contents are addressable by location, regardless

   of the content itself

–Machine language/Assemble language

–Sequential execution 

Second Generation (1950-1964) :: Transistors

 

•William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain invent the transistor that reduce size of computers and improve reliability. Vacuum tubes have been replaced by transistors.
                

•First operating Systems: handled one program at a time
                                  

•On-off switches controlled by electronically.
                                                

•High level languages (COBOL and FORTRAN)
                           

•Floating point arithmetic 

Third Generation (1964-1974) :: Integrated Circuits (IC)

The mass increase in the use of computers accelerated with 'Third Generation' computers. These generally relied on Jack Kilby's invention of the integrated circuits (or microchip), starting around 1965. However, the IBM System/360 used hybrid circuits, which were solid-state devices interconnected on a substrate with discrete wires.

The first integrated circuit was produced in September 1958 but computers using them didn't begin to appear until 1963. Some of their early uses were in embedded systems, notably used by NASA for the Apollo Guidance Computer by the military in the LGM-30 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile,and in the Central Air Data Computer used for flight control in the US Navy's F-14A Tomcat fighter jet.

By 1971, the Illiac IV supercomputer, which was the fastest computer in the world for several years, used about a quarter-million small-scale ECL logic gate integrated circuits to make up sixty-four parallel data processors.

While large mainframe computers such as the System/360 increased storage and processing abilities, the integrated circuit also allowed development of much smaller computers. The mini computer was a significant innovation in the 1960s and 1970s. It brought computing power to more people, not only through more convenient physical size but also through broadening the computer vendor field. Digital Equipment Corporation became the number two computer company behind IBM with their popular PDPand VAX computer systems. Smaller, affordable hardware also brought about the development of important new operating system like Unix.

Fourth Generation (1974-Present) :: VLSI / ULSI

Fourth Generation computers are the modern day computers. The Size started to go down with the improvement in the integerated circuits. Very Large Scale(VLSI) and Ultra Large scale(ULSI) ensured that millions of components could be fit into a small chip. It reduced the size and price of the computers at the same time increasing power, efficiency and reliability. "The Intel 4004 chip, developed in 1971, took the integrated circuit one step further by locating all the components of a computer (central processing unit, memory, and input and output controls) on a minuscule chip." 

Fifth Generation (now and the future)

Fifth Generation (Present and Beyond)
Fifth generations computers are only in the minds of advance research scientists and being tested out in the laboratories. These computers will be under Artificial Intelligence(AI), They will be able to take commands in a audio visual way and carry out instructions. Many of the operations which requires low human intelligence will be performed by these computers.
Parallel Processing is coming and showing the possibility that the power of many CPU's can be used side by side, and computers will be more powerful than those under central processing. Advances in Super Conductor technology will greatly improve the speed of information traffic. Future looks bright for the computers.