Evolution of computer generation.

Document

1. Experiment No: 01

Aim: Case study on Evolution of Computers

Evolution of Computers
A complete history of computing would include a multitude of diverse devices such as the
ancient Chinese abacus, the Jacquard loom (1805) and Charles Babbage's ``analytical engine''
(1834). It would also include discussion of mechanical, analog and digital computing
architectures. As late as the 1960s, mechanical devices, such as the Marchant calculator, still
found widespread application in science and engineering. During the early days of electronic
computing devices, there was much discussion about the relative merits of analog vs. digital
computers. In fact, as late as the 1960s, analog computers were routinely used to solve systems
of finite difference equations arising in oil reservoir modeling. In the end, digital computing
devices proved to have the power, economics and scalability necessary to deal with large scale
computations. Digital computers now dominate the computing world in all areas ranging from
the hand calculator to the supercomputer and are pervasive throughout society. Therefore, this
brief sketch of the development of scientific computing is limited to the area of digital, electronic
computers.
The evolution of digital computing is often divided into generations. Each generation is
characterized by dramatic improvements over the previous generation in the technology used to
build computers, the internal organization of computer systems, and programming languages.
Although not usually associated with computer generations, there has been a steady
improvement in algorithms, including algorithms used in computational science. The following
history has been organized using these widely recognized generations as mileposts.
1. First Generation (1937-1953)
Three machines have been promoted at various times as the first electronic computers. These
machines used electronic switches, in the form of vacuum tubes, instead of electromechanical
relays. In principle the electronic switches would be more reliable, since they would have no
moving parts that would wear out, but the technology was still new at that time and the tubes
were comparable to relays in reliability. Electronic components had one major benefit, however:
they could ``open'' and ``close'' about 1,000 times faster than mechanical switches.
The earliest attempt to build an electronic computer was by J. V. Atanasoff, a professor of
physics and mathematics at Iowa State, in 1937. Atanasoff set out to build a machine that would
help his graduate students solve systems of partial differential equations. By 1941 he and
graduate student Clifford Berry had succeeded in building a machine that could solve 29
simultaneous equations with 29 unknowns. However, the machine was not programmable, and
was more of an electronic calculator.
Features :
A second early electronic machine was Colossus, designed by Alan Turing for the British
military in 1943. This machine played an important role in breaking codes used by the German
army in World War II. Turing's main contribution to the field of computer science was the idea
of the Turing machine, a mathematical formalism widely used in the study of computable
functions. The existence of Colossus was kept secret until long after the war ended, and the
credit due to Turing and his colleagues for designing one of the first working electronic
computers was slow in coming.

2. Software technology during this period was very primitive. The first programs were written out
in machine code, i.e. programmers directly wrote down the numbers that corresponded to the
instructions they wanted to store in memory. By the 1950s programmers were using a symbolic
notation, known as assembly language, then hand-translating the symbolic notation into machine
code. Later programs known as assemblers performed the translation task.

Fig : 1 First Generation computer

 Few Examples are:
 ENIAC
 EDVAC
 UNIVAC
 IBM-701
 IBM-650

Advantages:
 Made use of vacuum tubes which are the only electronic component available during
those days.
 Use of vacuum tube technology made possible to make an electronic digital computer.
 These computers could calculate in milliseconds.

Disadvantages:
 Computers were very large in size.
 They consumed a large amount of energy.
 They heated very soon due to thousands of vacuum tubes.
 They were not very reliable.
 Air conditioning is required.
 Constant maintenance was required.
 Costly commercial production.

3.  Very slow speed.
 Limited programming capabilities.

2. Second Generation (1954-1962)


The second generation saw several important developments at all levels of computer
system design, from the technology used to build the basic circuits to the programming
languages used to write scientific applications.

Electronic switches in this era were based on discrete diode and transistor technology
with a switching time of approximately 0.3 microseconds. The first machines to be built
with this technology include TRADIC at Bell Laboratories in 1954 and TX-0 at MIT's
Lincoln Laboratory. Memory technology was based on magnetic cores which could be
accessed in random order, as opposed to mercury delay lines, in which data was stored as
an acoustic wave that passed sequentially through the medium and could be accessed
only when the data moved by the I/O interface.
Second generation computers used the low level language i.e. machine level language
and assembly language which made the programmers easier to specify the instructions.
Later on High level language programming were introduced such as COBOL and
FORTRAN. Magnetic core was used as primary storage. Second generation computer has
faster input /output devices which thus brought improvement in the computer.


Features:
 Use of transistors
 Reliable in comparison to first generation computers
 Smaller size as compared to first generation computers
 Generated less heat as compared to first generation computers
 Consumed less electricity as compared to first generation computers
 Faster than first generation computers
 Still very costly
 AC required
 Supported machine and assembly languages

4. Fig : 2 2nd Generation computer
 Few Examples are:
o Honeywell 400
o IBM 7094
o CDC 1604
o CDC 3600
o UNIVAC 1108


Advantages:
 Smaller in size as compared to the first generation computer.
 The second generation computers were more reliable.
 Used less energy and were not heated as much as first generation computer.
 Wider commercial use.
 Better portability as compared to the first generation computers.
 Better speed and could calculate data in microseconds.

Disadvantages:

 Cooling system was required.
 Constant maintenance was required.
 Commercial production was difficult.
 Only used for specific purposes.
 Costly and not versatile.

3.Third Generation (1963-1971)

The development of the integrated circuit was the hallmark of the third generation of computers.
Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon chips, called semiconductors, which
drastically increased the speed and efficiency of computers.
Instead of punched cards and printouts, users interacted with third generation computers through
keyboards and monitors and interfaced with an Operating System (O.S), which allowed the
device to run many different applications at one time with a central program that monitored the
memory.The first ICs were based on small-scale integration (SSI) circuits, which had around 10
devices per circuit (or ``chip''), and evolved to the use of medium-scale integrated (MSI) circuits,
which had up to 100 devices per chip. Multilayered printed circuits were developed and core
memory was replaced by faster, solid state memories. Computer designers began to take
advantage of parallelism by using multiple functional units, overlapping CPU and I/O operations,

5. and pipelining (internal parallelism) in both the instruction stream and the data stream. In 1964,
Seymour Cray developed the CDC 6600, which was the first architecture to use functional
parallelism
Computers for the first time became accessible to a mass audience because they were smaller
and cheaper than their predecessors.
Features:
 IC used
 More reliable in comparison to previous two generations
 Smaller size
 Generated less heat
 Faster
 Lesser maintenance
 AC required
 Consumed lesser electricity
 Supported high-level language

Fig : 3 3rd Generation computer

 Few Examples are:
o PDP-8
o PDP-11
o ICL 2900
o IBM 360
o IBM 370

Advantages:
 Smaller in size as compared to previous generations.
 More reliable as compared to previous generations.
 Used less energy as compared to previous generations.
 Could be used for high-level languages.
 Used mouse and keyboard for input.
Disadvantages:

6.  Air conditioning was required.
 Highly sophisticated technology required for the manufacturing of IC chips.
 Tactile sensitivity is decreased


4.Fourth Generation (1971 – today)
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 chips, 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 users, 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 other hand-held devices.
Graphic User Interface (GUI) technology was exploited to offer more comfort to users. PCs
became more affordable and widespread during this period.
A significant development in software was the development of concurrent programming
languages like ADA. Another notable development was the introduction of interactive graphic
devices and language interfaces to graphic systems .


Fig : 4 4th Generation computer

 Few Examples are:
o IBM 4341
o DEC 10
o STAR 1000
o PUP 11

Advantages:
 More powerful and reliable than previous generations.

7.  Small in size
 Fan for heat discharging and thus to keep cold.
 Fast processing power with less power consumption.
 Totally general purpose.
 Cheapest among all generations
Disadvantages:
 The latest technology is required for manufacturing of Microprocessors.

5. Fifth Generation (Today to future)

Fifth generation computing devices, based on artificial intelligence, and are still in development,
though there are some applications, such as voice recognition, that are being used today.
The use of parallel processing and super-conductors is helping to make artificial intelligence a
reality. Quantum computation and molecular and Nano-technology will
radically change the face of computers in years to come. The goal of fifth-generation computing
is to develop devices that respond to natural language input and are capable of learning and self-
organization.
On the software front, effort is being directed at developing languages to cope with new
generation computers. Languages known as functional languages and object-oriented languages
such as C++ have been developed during this generation. Development of more user-friendly
operating systems like MS Windows and Linux, and Linux based software products are the other
developments during this period.
Features:
 ULSI technology
 Development of true artificial intelligence
 Development of Natural language processing
 Advancement in Parallel Processing
 Advancement in Superconductor technology
 More user-friendly interfaces with multimedia features
 Availability of very powerful and compact computers at cheaper rates

 Few Examples are:
o Desktop
o Laptop
o NoteBook
o UltraBook
o Chromebook

8. Fig : 5 5th Generation computer
Advantages
 It is easier to repair these computers.
 Advancement in Parallel Processing.
 Advancement in Superconductor technology.
 Development of true artificial intelligence.
 These computers are much smaller in size than other generation computers
Disadvantages
 They tend to be sophisticated and complex tools.
 They can give more power to companies to watch what you are doing and even allow
them to infect your computer.
Conclusion:

In this we are study the evolution of computer generation. How day by day the increasing and
learning the new technology effect on computer development, the evolution of
digital computing is often divided into generations. Each generation is characterized by dramatic
improvements over the previous generation in the technology used to build computers, the
internal organization of computer systems, and programming languages. In the last we are also
seen our pc and mobile component configuration.

9. PC Configuration:


Fig : 6 PC Configuration
Cellphone Configuration:


Fig: 7 Cellphone Configuration