Final computer generations

Computer Generations

Computer Generations• Term generation indicates the type of technology

used in the computer construction.

• The new technology improved the speed, accuracy and storage capacity of the computers.

Two Eras:• Mechanical Era (Before 1940)• Electronic Era (Since 1940)

Computers can be divided into five generations depending upon the technologies used. These are:

• First Generation (1940 - 1958) • Second Generation (1959 - 1964) • Third Generation (1964 - 1974) • Fourth Generation (1975 - 1989) • Fifth Generation (1990 - Present)

First Generation 1940- 1956

• Used vacuum tubes for circuit.• Enormous size and took up entire room.• Relied on machine language. • Used a great deal of electricity, generated a lot

of heat.• Hard-wired.• IBM 650, Univac I, ENIAC, EDVAC

Second Generation 1959-1964• Transistors replaced vacuum tubes.• Transistor was invented in 1948 at Bell

Laboratories.• Computers moved from cryptic binary machine

language to symbolic(Assembly Language).• Punch Cards & Paper.• Honeywell 400, IBM 7030, UNIVAC LARC, CDC

1604

Third Generation 1965-1974

• Development of the Silicon Chips (Integrated circuits)= IC

• Initially, an IC contained only about ten to twenty components (Small Scale Integration (SSI)).

• Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon chips, called semiconductors.

• Used keyboards and monitors and interfaced with an operating system.

Third Generation 1965-1974(Contd.)

• High-level languages were commonly used, such as early versions of COBOL and FORTRAN.

• IBM 360/370, PDP-8,11, CDC 6600.

Fourth Generation 1975-1989

• Microchip technology was introduced• LSI (Large Scale Integration) chips were

developed.• It was possible to integrate over 30,000 or more

components on to single LSI chip.• VLSI was also developed.

Fourth Generation 1975-1989(Contd.)

• Development of microprocessor.• Used advanced input & output devices.• IM PC & its clones, Apple II, CRAY-1, CRAY-2.

Fifth Generation 1990-present• First to fourth generation computers did not have

their own thinking power. • Based on artificial intelligence (AI).• The goal of fifth-generation computing is to

develop devices that respond to natural language input and are capable of learning and self-organization.

• ULSI Technology has to be used.

Fifth Generation 1990-present (Contd.)

• Are still in development, though there are some applications, such as voice recognition.

• The programming languages LISP (List Processor) and PROLOG (Programming with Logic) are used for artificial intelligence.

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