Generations of computer

 

Generations of Computer

 

 

In computer terminology generation refers to a change in technology being used in a computer.

Initially it used to distinguish between the varying hardware technologies. But nowadays, the term generation includes both hardware and software since they together make up an entire computer system.

There are five computer generations which are known till date. Each generation of computer is characterized by a major developments resulted in computers becoming increasingly small, cheap, more powerful and efficient computing devices. You will now learn about each of the five generations of computers and the developments in technology, that have led to the devices which we are using today.

 

First Generation (1946-1959) Vacuum Tubes

These computer used vacuum tubes as the basic component circuitry for CPU and magnetic drums for memory. They were often enormous in size, taking up entire rooms. The vacuum tubes consumed a lot of electricity and produced a lot of heat, which was often the cause of malfunctions. They were very expensive. In this generation, batch processing operating system was used. Punched cards, paper tape, and magnetic tape were used as input and output devices. Machine language or binary code, the lowest-level programming language understood by computers was used as the programming language in this generation of computers.

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose computer of this generation. Some other computers of this generation were EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer), IBM-701 and IBM-650.

Second Generation (1956-1963) Transistors

In the second generation of computers vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors. The transistor was invented in 1947. It become widely used in computers only in the late 1950s. The transistor was far superior to the vacuum tube. Due to its small size, the computers became smaller, faster. Cheaper, more energy-efficient and more reliable than their first-generation predecessors.

For inputs and second generation computers still relied on punched cards and output was still in form printouls. They started using Assembly language which allowed programmers to specify instructions in form of words languages like COBOL and FORTRAN were also being the first computers that stored their instructions in the memory. Magnetic cores were used as secondary storage devices.

The computers used batch processing and multiprogramming operating system. Some computers of this generation were IBM 1620, IBM7094, CDC 1604, CDC 3600, UNIVAC 1108.

 

Third Generation (1965-19761) IC’s

In place of transistors, the computers of third generation used integrated circuits or IC’s. A single IC (integrated circuit) has many transistors, resistors and capacitors along with the associated circuitors along with the associated circuitry. With this development, the computers became smaller in size, more reliable and efficient. Transistors were very small in size and placed on silicon chips. These chips were called semiconductors and this increased the speed and efficiency of computers. In this generation, the operating system supported remote processing, time-sharing and multi-programming.

Keyboards were used instead of punshed cards for input and monitors were used instead of printouts for output. High-level languages like FORTRAN, COVOL, PASCAL, PL/1, BASIC, ALGOL etc. were develop and used during this generation. Some computers of this generation were IBM-360 series, Honeywell-6000 series, PDP(Personal Data Processor), IBM-370 series and TDC-316.

 

Fourth Generation (1971-Present) Microprocessors

The fourth generation of computers used Very Large Scale Integrated _VLSI) circuits. VLSI circuits had about 5000 transistors and other circuit elements on a single chip. The microprocessor brought that fourth generation of computers onto a single silicon chip called the Microprocessor.
These small computers were very powerful and they could be linked together to form networks. This led to the development of the Internet. It also gave rise to the personal computer (PC) revolution. In this generation time sharing, real time, networks, distributed operating system were used. High-level languages like C, C++, DBASE etc. were used. Fourth generation computers also saw the development of GUI’s (Graphical User Interface), the mouse and handhead devices. Some computers of this generation were DEC 10, STAR 1000, PDP 11, CRAY-X-MP.

 

Fifth Generation (1980-till date)

Fifth generation computing devices are based on Artificial Intelligence and still under development. Al is an emerging branch of computer science which tried to make computers think like human beings. In this generation USLI (Ultra Large Scale Integration) technology is used. This has resulted in this production of microprocessor chips having ten million electronic components. This generation is based on parallel processing hardware. High-level languages like C and C++, Java, .net etc., are used in this generation. They also take audio commands i.e voice recognition.

The aim of fifth generation is to develop the devices which could respond to natural language input and to be able to solve highly complex problems including decision making, logical reasoning. This generation computers also aim to recognize image and graphics.

There are some applications which are already using voice recognition. Quantum computation, molecular and nanotechnology will be used to make this possible in the years to come as computer technology is changing every day. So we can say that the fifth generation computers will have the power of human intelligence.

Super computer. A supercomputer is a computer with very high-level computational capacity compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations per second(FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second(MIPS). As of June 2016, the fastest supercomputer in the world is the Sunway TaihuLight, in mainland china.