Computer Generations

Computer generation can defined

as the state of improvement

or development of

technology

Basically new generation

introduces, miniaturization in technology

& enhancement in

speed, power and memory

COMPUTER GENERATIONS

• 1st Generation (1940-1956: Vacuum Tubes)• 2nd Generation (1956-1963: Transistors )

• 3rd Generation (1964-1971:Integrated Circuits)• 4th Generation (1971-Present:

Microprocessors)

• 5th Generation (Present and Beyond: Artificial Intelligence)

First Generation - 1940-1956 The first generation computers used vacuum tubes for

circuitry andmagnetic drums for memory, and system build-up to entire rooms.

They were very expensive to operate and in addition to using a great deal of electricity, generated a lot of heat,which was often the cause of malfunctions.

First generation computers relied on machine language, the lowest-level programming language understood by computers, to perform operations, and they could only solve one problem at a time. Input was based on punched cards and paper tape, and output was displayed on

printouts.

The ENIAC and UNIVAC computers are examples of first-generation computing devices. The UNIVAC was the first commercial computer delivered to a business client to the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951.

ENIAC

UNIVAC

Vacuum tube

Vacuum tube is a device used to amplify, switch and create or modify electrical signals by controlling the movement of electrons in a low-pressure space.

Current passing through the filament heats-up so that it gives flow in electrons.

These negatively charged, attracts to the positive plate resulting current in circuit.

Magnetic drum memoryA magnetic drum is a metal cylinder coated with magnetic iron-oxide material on which data and programs can be stored. Magnetic drums were once used as a primary storage device then used as auxiliary storage devices.

The tracks on a magnetic drum are assigned to channels located around the circumference of the drum. A single drum can have up to 200 tracks.

As the drum rotates at a speed of up to 3,000 rpm, the

device's read/write heads deposit magnetized spots on

the drum during the write operation and sense these spots during a read operation. This action is similar to that of a magnetic tape or hard drive.

The drum is permanently mounted in the device and able to retrieve data at a quicker rate than tape or disk devices.

Machine LanguageThe lowest-level programming language that computers that utilize for programming, it is microcode for the CPU, Machine languages are the only languages which is understood by computers.

Machine languages are almost impossible for humans to use because they consist entirely of numbers (0 & 1), Programmers therefore, use either a high-level or an assembly language.

An assembly language contains the same instructions as a machine language, but the instructions and variables have names instead of being just numbers.

Programmes written in high-level language are translated into assembly language or machine language by the compiler and code of Assembly language translated into machine language by the Assembler.

Punch CardPunched card is a piece of paper that contains digital information (0 or 1) represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions

Punched cards and paper tape were once widely used to store data in binary form.

Today they have been replaced with other media based on electromagnetic and electro-optic technologies except in a few special applications

Second Generation - 1956-1963

Second generation of computer was based on Transistors replaced vacuum tubes after its inventions in 1947.

The transistor was far superior technology to the vacuum tube, allowing computer circuitry to become smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient and more reliable than their first-generation technology.

Though the transistor still generated a great deal of heat that subjected the computer to damage, yet it was a vast improvement over the vacuum tube.

Second-generation computers still relied on punched cards for input and printouts for output.

Second-generation computers moved from cryptic binary machine language to symbolic or assembly, languages, which allowed programmers to specify instructions in words. High-level programming languages were also being developed at this time, such as early versions of COBOL and FORTRAN.

These were also the first computers that stored their instructions in their memory, which moved from a magnetic drum to magnetic core technology.

The computers of this generation were developed for the atomic energy industry.

Transistor

Device is composed of semiconductor material that amplifies a signal or opens or closes a circuit, transistor is invented in 1947 at Bell Labs,

Transistors have become the key component of all digital circuits, including computers, Today's microprocessors contains tens of millions of microscopic transistors.

Prior to the invention of transistors, digital circuits were composed of vacuum tubes, which had many disadvantages, they were much larger, required more energy, dissipated more heat, and were more to failures.

It's say that without the invention of transistors, computing today would not be possible.

Magnetic Core Technology

Magnetic core memory is an early form of RAM computer memory.

It uses small magnetic ceramic rings, the cores, through which wires are threaded to store information via the polarity of the magnetic field, such memory is called core memory or core.

Magnetic core memory technology was the application of PHYSICS branch of Electromagnetism.

COBOLCOmmon Business Oriented Language, developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, COBOL is the second-oldest high-level programming language after FORTRAN.

It is particularly popular for business applications that run on large computers. COBOL is a wordy language means code written in COBOL is much longer than the same programs written in other languages.

Its primary use is in the fields of business, finance, and administrative systems for various companies and governments. It also is responsible for some of the back end computing behind online financial transaction and payroll services.

FORTRAN

FORTRAN is the acronym of FORmula TRANslator is the oldest high-level programming lanaguage, designed by John Backus for IBM in the late 1950s,

it is still popular today, particularly for scientific and engineering applications that require extensive mathematical computations.

Its most successful earlier versions are FORTRAN, FORTRAN IV, FORTRAN 77 and with the passage its code and application being modified and its model

FORTRAN-90 was developed in the early 90s.

Third Generation - 1964-1971

Third Generation of computers are based on Integrated Circuits (ICs), the invention of the Integrated Circuit was the hallmark of the third generation of computers.

Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon chips, which drastically increased the speed and efficiency of computers.

Instead of punched cards and printouts, users interacted with keyboards and monitors and interfaced with an Operating System, which allowed the device to run many different applications at one time with a central program that monitored the memory.

Computers for the first time became accessible to a mass audience because they were smaller and cheaper than their earlier generations.

Integrated Circuits

An Integrated Circuit (IC) which contains thousands of transistors is a small electronic device made out of a semiconductor material, the first IC was developed in the 1950s by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce.

This semiconductor ICs are used for a variety of devices, including microprocessor, audio and video equipment, and automobiles. Integrated circuits are often classified by the number of transistors and other electronic components they contain:

SSI (small-scale integration): Up to 100 electronic componentsper chip

MSI (medium-scale integration): From 100 to 3,000 electronic components per chip

LSI (large-scale integration): From 3,000 to 100,000 electroniccomponents per chip

VLSI (very large-scale integration): From 100,000 to 1,000,000 electronic components per chip

ULSI (ultra large-scale integration): More than 1 million electroniccomponents per chip.

Fourth Generation - 1971-Present: Microprocessors

The microprocessor brought the fourth generation of computers, as thousands of integrated circuits were built onto a single silicon chip. What in the first generation filled an entire room could now fit in the palm of the hand.

The Intel 4004 chip, developed in 1971, located all the components of the computer - from the Central Processing Unit and memory to input/output controls - on a single chip.

In 1981 IBM introduced its first computer for the home user, and in 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh. Microprocessors also moved out of the realm of desktop computers and into many areas of life as more and more everyday products began to use microprocessors.

As these small computers became more powerful, they could be linked together to form networks, which eventually led to the development of the Internet. Fourth generation computers also saw the development of GUIs, the mouse and handheld devices.

MicroprocessorMicroprocessor is a communally called CPU is the heart of all computers and control the logics of almost all digital devices.

There are three characteristics microprocessors:

INSTRUCTION SETBANDWIDTHCLOCK SPEED

CPU performance is based on speed, the higher the speed the more powerful the CPU. For example, a 32-bit microprocessor that runs at 50MHz is more powerful than a 16-bit microprocessor that runs at 25MHz.

In addition to bandwidth and clock speed, microprocessors are classified as being either RISC and CISC.

Processor…

• Instruction Set: The set of instructions that the microprocessor can execute.

• Bandwidth: The number of bits processed in a single instruction.

• Clock Speed: Given in megahertz (MHz), the clock speed determines how many instructions per second the processor can execute.

RISC

Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC), a type of microprocessor that recognizes a relatively limited number of instructions.

One advantage of reduced instruction set computers RISC is that they can execute their instructions very fast because the instructions are limited and so simple.

CISC

Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC), most personal computer use a CISC architecture, in which the CPU supports as many as two hundred instructions.

An alternative architecture, used by many workstations and also some personal computers, is RISC which supports fewer instructions.

Fifth Generation - Present and Beyond: Artificial Intelligence

Fifth generation computing devices is based on advance and state–of-the-art technology of processors with other features of Artificial Intelligence, Its some applications are;

Voice recognition, Parallel Processing Auto SystemsQuantum Computation NanotechnologyGPS, GISRoboticsGrid computation

The goal of fifth-generation computing is to develop devices that respond to natural language input and are capable of learning and self-organization.

Artificial intelligence

It is the branch of computer science concerned

to making computers behave like humans.

AI has some famous areas;

Experts systems: Real-life decisions.

Natural Language: Understand human language.

Robotics: Computers ability to see, hear & react.

Auto Piloting: Plane and air vehicles fly without pilot.

Auto Sensing: System that responds automatically.

Voice Recognition

This is one of the field of computer science that deals with designing computer systems that can recognize spoken words, this means that system recognized voice will be matched with expert systems and respond as per received voice instructions.

The most powerful system can recognize thousands of words.

Practical voice recognition systems used in computer dictionaries, digital libraries, customer services and training session.

RoboticsThis field of computer science and engineering concerned with creating robots, devices that can move and react to sensory input.

Robotics is also branch of artificial intelligence. Robots are widely used in factories to perform high-precision jobs such as welding and riveting.

They are also used in special situations that would be dangerous for humans -- for example, in cleaning toxic wastes or defusing bombs.

Though great advances have been made in the field of robotics but still not very useful in everyday life.

NanotechnologyNanotechnology, is the deals with control of matter of atomic and molecular substances.

Generally nanotechnology work with structures of the size 100 nanometers or even smaller, and involves developing materials or devices within that size.

Nanotechnology is very diverse fied, ranging from extensions of conventional physics components to molecular self-assembly.This technology making possible by developing new materials with dimensions on the nano-scale, even to speculation on whether we can directly control matter on the atomic scale.

Nanotechnology has the potential to create many new materials and devices with wide-ranging applications, such as in medicine, electronics, energy production and atomic research.

Quantum ComputationIt is branch of Physics dealing with the properties of Atoms or nuclei applications that allow them to work together as quantum bits, or qubits , using computer's processor and memory by interacting with each other, qubits can perform certain calculations exponentially faster than conventional computers.

Qubits do not rely on the traditional binary 0 and 1 numbers but quantum computers encode information as a series of quantum-mechanical states such as spin directions of electrons or polarization of a photons.

Quantum computing has the potential to be much more powerful than a classical computer of the same size, using only a single processing unit, a quantum computer can naturally perform many operations in parallel.

Parallel Processing

In computers, parallel processing is the processing of program instructions by dividing them among multiple processors with the objective of running a program in less time.

In the earliest computers, only one program ran at a time, The computer would start an I/O operation, and while it was waiting for the operation to complete.

Multitasking is practical application of parallel processing.

Grid computation Grid computing is the act of sharing tasks over multiple computers. Tasks can range from data storage to complex calculations and can be spread over large geographical distances.

These computers join together to create a virtual (network) super computer, Networked computers can work on the same problems, traditionally reserved for supercomputers, and yet this network of computers are more powerful than the super computers built in the seventies and eighties.

Modern supercomputers are built on the principles of grid computing.

Mobile Computing

Mobile computing can be describing as the ability to use technology while moving, with the help of this technology device can work in any piece of earth. Many types of mobile computers have been introduced since the 1990s, including the:

Wearable computers Personal Digital AssistantEnterprise Digital AssistantSmart PhonesUltra-Mobile PCare the best examples of mobile computing.

GISA geographic information system (GIS) integrates hardware, software, and data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information.

GIS allows us to view, understand, question, interpret, and visualize data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts.

A GIS helps you answer questions and solve problems by looking at your data in a way that is quickly understood and easily shared.

GIS technology can be integrated into any enterprise information system framework.

GPSThe Global Positioning System (GPS) is a navigation and accurate-positioning technology, developed by the Department of Defense in 1973, GPS was originally designed to assist soldiers and military vehicles, planes and ships in accurately determining their locations world-wide.

Today, the use of GPS have been extended to both commercial and scientific applications. Commercially, GPS is used as a navigation and positioning tool in airplanes, boats, cars, and for almost all outdoor recreational activities such as hiking, fishing, and kayaking.

In Science, GPS plays an important role in the earth sciences, meteorology, weather forecasting, and geologists can use it as a highly accurate method of surveying and in earthquake studies to measure motions and shocks during and in between earthquakes.