History of Computer III- Generations of Computer

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In today’s class, we will be talking more about the history of computer- generations of computer. Enjoy the class!

History of Computer III- Generations of Computer

(iii) Third Generation (1964-1977): 

By the development of a small chip consisting of the capacity of the 300 transistors. These Integrated Circuits (IC) are popularly known as Chips. A single IC has many transistors, registers and capacitors built on a single thin slice of silicon. So it is quite obvious that the size of the computer got further reduced. Some of the computers developed during this period were IBM-360, IBM-370, and VAX-750.

Higher-level language such as BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was developed during this period.  Computers of this generation were small in size, low cost, large memory and processing speed is very high. Very soon ICs were replaced by LSI (Large Scale Integration), which consisted about 100 components. An IC containing about 100 components is called LSI.

Features

1. They used the Integrated Circuit (IC) chips in place of the transistors.
2. Semiconductor memory devices were used.
3. The size was greatly reduced, the speed of processing was high, and they were more accurate and reliable.
4. Large Scale Integration (LSI) and Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) were also developed.
5. The minicomputers were introduced in this generation.
6. They used high-level language for programming.

Example: IBM 360, IBM 370 etc.

(iv) Fourth Generation: 

An IC containing about 100 components is called LSI (Large Scale Integration) and the one, which has more than 1000 such components, is called as VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration). It uses large scale Integrated Circuits (LSIC) built on a single silicon chip called microprocessors. Due to the development of the microprocessor, it is possible to place the computer’s central processing unit (CPU) on a single chip.

These computers are called microcomputers. Later very large scale Integrated Circuits (VLSIC) replaced LSICs. Thus the computer which was occupying a very large room in earlier days can now be placed on a table. The personal computer (PC) that you see in your school is a Fourth Generation Computer Main memory used fast semiconductors chips up to 4 M bits size. Hard disks were used as secondary memory. Keyboards, dot matrix printers etc. were developed. OS-such as MS-DOS, UNIX, Apple’s Macintosh were available. Object-oriented language, C++ etc. were developed.

Apple’s Macintosh

Features

1. They used Microprocessor (VLSI) as their main switching element.
2. They are also called as microcomputers or personal computers.
3. Their size varies from desktop to laptop or palmtop.
4. They have a very high speed of processing; they are 100% accurate, reliable, diligent and versatile.
5. They have very large storage capacity.

Example: IBM PC, Apple-Macintosh etc.

(v) Fifth Generation (1991- to date):

5th generation computers use ULSI (Ultra-Large Scale Integration) chips. Millions of transistors are placed in a single IC in ULSI chips. 64-bit microprocessors have been developed during this period. Data flow & EPIC architecture of these processors have been developed. RISC & CISC, both types of designs are used in modern processors. Memory chips and flash memory up to 1 GB, hard disks up to 600 GB & optical disks up to 50 GB have been developed. The fifth-generation digital computer will be Artificial intelligence.

General evaluation

1. Who is the “father of the computer”?
2. List and explain the various mechanical and electronic devices you know?
3. What are the limitations of first-generation computers?
4. What are the features of the second generation of computers?
5. Which year was the fifth generation computer discovered?

 

In our next class, we will be talking about Input Devices. We hope you enjoyed the class.

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