Computer Generation

 

!!The Computer Generation!!

Father Of Computer: -Charles Babbages ,nineteenth century professor at Cambridge          university, is considered to be the father of modern digital computer.                                                                                                                             In computer “Generation” is used to distinguish between hardware technologies. we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various generation.

    

                                      First Generation (1946 to 1954)

These generation computer are a ENIAC,EDVAC,EDSAC, etc. These computer made up of vacuum tubes. These are fragile glass device that could control and amplify electric signals.

Advantage:-

1. Vacuum tube was the only electronic components available during those days.

2. Vacuum tube technology made possible the advent of electronic                           digital computer.

3. These computers were the fastest device of their time. They could perform computations in milliseconds.

Disadvantage :-

1. Too big in size.

2.  Unreliable.

3.  Non Portable

 4.  Thousands of vacuum tubes were used and emitted large amount           of heat and burnt out frequently.

         5.  Air conditioning required.

         6.  Commercial production was difficult and costly.

 

ENIAC :-   Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer.

EDVAC :-  Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer.

EDSAC :-  Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer.         

Second Generation(1955-1969)

            The transistor, a smaller and more reliable successor to the VACCUM TUBE was invented in 1947 .How ever computers that used transistor were not produced until over a decade. The second Generation emerged with transistor being the brain of the computer.

Advantage:-

1:- Smaller in size as compared to first generation computer.

2:-More reliable

3:-Less heat generated     

4:-Better portability

5:-Wider commercial use

6:-These computers were able to reduce computational time from milliseconds 10^-3  to microsecond 10^-6.

Disadvantage :-

1:-Air conditioning required.

2:-commercial production was difficult and costly.

 

Third Generation (1965-1974)

            The third generation was based on IC technology and the computer that was designed with the use of integrated circuits was called third generation computers.

Advantage:-

1:-smaller in size as compared to previous generation computers.

2:-More reliable than second generation computers.

3:-lower heat generation.

4:-Easily portable.

5:-Commercial production was easier and cheaper.

6:-These computers were able to reduce computational times from microsecond 10^-6to nanosecond 10^-9.

Disadvantage:-

Air conditioning required in many cases.

Fourth Generation(1975  onword):-

            Small scale integration  (SSI) technology developed in this generation .It contain only about  10 or 20 components later up to 100 of component integrate on a single chip.       

            This technology came to known as MSI (medium scale integration)

Then came to the era to larger scale integration (LSI) WHEN it was possible to integrate over 30000 components on to a single chip.

Further we expected that more one million component would be integrate on a single chip known as very large scale integration (VLSI).

 

Advantage:-

1:-smaller in size.

2:-very reliable.

3:-heat generated negligible.

4:-No A.C  required in most cases.

5:-very fast

6:-maintenance is minimum required.

(7) Easily portable due to small size.

(8):- Cheapest among all generation.

 

Disadvantage:-

Highly sophisticated technology required of LSI chips.

Fifth generation(Yet to come):-

Scientist aim to give us machine with genuine IQ, the ability to reason logically and with the real knowledge of the world. In nature it will not do only as data processing but as knowledge processing.Japan has already started work in this direction few years back.Japan has chosen prolog (programming in logic) language as its operating software and plans to have the final machine talk with human being see and deliver picture and hear the normal, natural language.