GENERATION OF COMPUTER

 GENERATION OF COMPUTER

The first electronic computer was designed and built at the University of Pennsylvania based on vacuum tube technology. Vacuum tubes were used to perform logic operations and to store data. Generations of computers has been divided into five according to the development of technologies used to fabricate the processors, memories and I/O units.

I Generation : 1945 – 55

II Generation : 1955 – 65

III Generation : 1965 – 75

IV Generation : 1975 – 89

V Generation : 1989 to present

­­­­­­­­FIRST GENERATION

A glass tube surrounding a vacuum (an area from which all gases have been removed). What makes it interesting is that when electrical contacts are put on the ends, you can get a current to flow though that vacuum. Thomas Edison noticed this first in 1883

(ENIAC - Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator

EDSAC – Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator

EDVAC – Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer

UNIVAC – Universal Automatic Computer

IBM 701) Read more...

CHARACTERISTICS

Vacuum tubes were used – basic arithmetic operations took few milliseconds

Bulky

Consume more power with limited performance

High cost

Uses assembly language – to prepare programs. These were translated into machine level language for execution.

Mercury delay line memories and Electrostatic memories were used

Fixed point arithmetic was used

100 to 1000 fold increase in speed relative to the earlier mechanical and relay based electromechanical technology

Punched cards and paper tape were invented to feed programs and data and to get results.

Magnetic tape / magnetic drum were used as secondary memory

Mainly used for scientific computations.