A Brief History of Computers

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ABACUS

• 2000-500 BC

• Babylonians or Chinese

Abacus

Early Calculators

• 1614 John Napier, Napier’s Rods - multiply, divide, square roots

• 1623 Wilhelm Schickard, Calculating Clock reconstructed in 1960

• 1625 slide rule invented

• 1642 Blaise Pascal invented the Pascaline, the first “digital calulator”

Napier’s Bones

Schickard’s Calculator

Slide Rule

The Pascaline

Early Caluclators

• 1822 Charles Babbage Mechanical computing machine. Too complicated to build until 1853

Babbage’s “Difference Engine”

Vacuum Tube

• 1906

• Lee Forest invented the “Electronic Valve”

• This made digital electronic computers possible

Early Vacuum Tube

First Generation computers

• 1939 - 1959

• Use vacuum tubes and wire circuits

• 1939 ABC computer completed, clock speed of 60 Hz, uses punch cards for secondary memory

• 1946 ENIAC 18,000 valves, used 25 KW of power, 100,000 calculations/second

ABC Atanasoff-Berry Computer

ENIAC

ENIAC

Transistors

• 1947

• Bell laboratories invent the transistor

• Smaller, cheaper, more reliable, less heat

First Transistor

Second Generation Computers

• 1959 - 1964

• Based on transistors and printed circuits

• Much smaller and less power consumption

Integrated Circuit

• 1958

• Invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments

• Integrates the functions of many transistors into one physical component

First Integrated Circuit

Third Generation Computers

• 1964 - 1972

• Based on integrated circuits, smaller than 2nd Generation

Microprocessors

• 1971

• Intel released first microprocessor, the 4004

• Equivalent to 2,300 transistors, 4 bit data path, ran at 108 KHz

• Microprocessors are complex integrated circuits, capable of many different functions

Intel 4004 Processor

Intel 8088 circuitry

Fourth Generation Computers

• 1972 -

• Based on microprocessors

• Utilize LSI (Large Scale Integration), and VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration)

• Smaller, faster, and more complex than 3rd Generation

Fifth Generation Computers

• ????

• Will be much smaller and faster than 4th Generation

• Greatly increased data storage capability

• Will most likely have light, easily transportable display capabilities

• May be built into clothing

Fifth Generation Computers

• Fifth Generation - Present and Beyond: Artificial IntelligenceFifth generation computing devices, based on artificial intelligence, are still in development, though there are some applications, such as voice recognition, that are being used today. The use of parallel processing and superconductors is helping to make artificial intelligence a reality. Quantum computation and molecular and nanotechnology 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.

Physical Limits

• Chip designers are running up against the laws of physics. Ten years from now, chips will run at 30 GHz and complete a trillion operations per second. Unfortunately, with today's design technologies, those chips would be putting out the same amount of heat, proportionally, as a nuclear power plant.

Physical Limits & CPUs

• We have “hit the wall” of physics in our CPU clock speeds

• Intel announced in 2004 that it would not attempt to make processors that run at speeds greater than 3.6 GHZ

• Future CPUs will have multiple “Cores” to increase performance and bandwidth

Future Computers

• Few argue that the next generation of computers will be nearly invisible, meaning that they will blend in with everyday objects. Flexible ink-like circuitry will be printed onto plastic or sprayed onto various other substrates, such as clothes.

Wearable Computers-Now

Wearable Computers-future?

Wearable Computers

Wearables