Generational Computing CSCI 1060 Fall 2006
Jan 12, 2016
Generational Computing
CSCI 1060Fall 2006
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First Generation• Large computers, difficult to program• Primarily used by scientists and engineers
for faster and accurate calculations• Vacuum tube technology, software was in
machine language (0s and 1s)• Algorithms were translated into binary or
hardwired• First electronic digital computer was built
in the late 1930s by Atanasoff & Berry
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First Generation• ABC was used as a basis for a general-
purpose computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) in 1944 by Dr. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
• First commercial computer was the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951
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Second Generation• Took place in the 1950s improving hardware
and software• Transistors allowed faster calculations with
lower power consumption in a smaller space• The transistor was developed in 1947 by John
Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at Bell Telephone Laboratories
• Assembly Language helped bolster software• Compare binary to assembly, advantages?
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Third Generation• Hardware continues to improve with the
development of the integrated circuit (IC) in 1958 at Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor
• Small scale integration (SSI) and medium scale integration (MSI) become common terms
• SSI – fewer than 100 components on a chip
• MSI – hundreds to a thousand components
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Third Generation• Third generation languages (or High
Level Languages, HLL) appeared for software
• FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator), COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), C, Pascal, Ada, and others
• More code with fewer errors• Compare to assembly
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Fourth Generation• Continued miniaturization of transistors• LSI (Large Scale Integration) –
thousands to ten thousands components
• VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) – 104 to 109 components
• Entered the market in the late 1970s to early 1980s
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Fourth Generation• Fourth generation languages useful to
businesses for storing records and generating reports began to appear
• Often built using third generation languages• Very similar to databases, but more
powerful• Users could generate application programs
using menus• Could generate very complex reports
through the same menu system
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Fifth Generation• Parallel processing and distributed
computing using networks is becoming popular
• Advancements in artificial intelligence, speech synthesis, and natural language recognition also become important