Transcript Lecture 1 Introduction to the Computers

Lecture 2
History/Evolution of Computers
CSCS100 - Fall 2009 – Forman Christian College
Asher Imtiaz
*Several of these slides have been adapted and modified from LUMS CS101
course (Dr Sohaib Khan and Dr Arif Zaman), VU CS101 slides (Dr. Altaf A. Khan)
and Peter Norton’s supplementary material.
“If you want to understand today,
you have to search yesterday.”
Pearl Buck
Goals
• To look at how computers evolved to take
the form that they have today.
• To discuss key milestones in the history of
computers to:
• Learn lessons from the successes, as well as
failures
• Discover patterns of evolution
• Draw inspiration for the future
Abacus – Computer?
Not really a computer, but
rather a computing aid
Babbage’s Analytical Engine - 1833
• First Mechanical, Digital,
general-purpose
computer
• Crank-driven
• Store instructions
• Perform mathematical
calculations
• Store information
permanently in punched
cards
• Components: input,
memory, processor,
output
Image credits: www.britannica.com copyright©
Jacquard Loom – A Real Computer?
• Intricate textile patterns were
prized in France in early 1800s.
• Invented by Frenchman
Jacquard for storing weaved
patterns for textile looms
(“khadian”)
• Jacquard’s loom (1805-6) used
punched cards to allow only
some rods to bring the thread
into the loom on each shuttle
pass.
• Their value for storing computerrelated information was later
realized by the early computer
builders
• Punched cards were replaced
by magnetic storage only in the
early 1950s
http://65.107.211.206/technology/jacquard.html
Slide Credit: Prof Slotterbeck, Hiram College
Jacquard Loom
http://65.107.211.206/technology/jacquard.html
Slide Credit: Prof Slotterbeck, Hiram College
Protests against Jacquard’s Invention
• Hand weavers saw the automatic loom as
a threat to their livelihood
• They burned several of the new machines
• A few weavers even physically assaulted
Jacquard
Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-52)
• Babbage: the father of computing
Ada: the mother?
• Wrote a program for computing the
Bernoulli’s sequence on the Analytical
Engine - world’s 1st computer program
• Ada?
• A programming language specifically
designed by the US Dept of Defense for
developing military applications was
named Ada to honor her contributions
towards computing
Vacuum Tube – 1904
• John Fleming, an English
Physicist
• Electronic devices, consist of 2
or more electrodes encased
in a glass or metal tube
• Used in the construction of
earlier computers
• Now replaced by transistors more reliable and less costly.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Minaturevacuumtube.jpg
ABC – 1939
• Attanasoff-Berry Computer (John Attanasoff & Clifford
Berry at Iowa State College)
• World’s first electronic computer
• The first computer that used binary numbers
• Used for solving equations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff%E2%80%93Berry_Computer
Harvard Mark 1 – 1943
• Howard Aiken of Harvard University
• The first program controlled machine
• Included all the ideas proposed by Babbage for the
Analytical Engine
• The last famous electromechanical computer
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_I
ENIAC – 1946
• Electronic Numerical
Integrator And Computer
• World’s first large-scale,
general-purpose electronic
computer
• Built by John Mauchly & John
Echert at the University of
Pennsylvania
• Developed for military
applications
• 5,000 operations/sec, 19000
tubes, 30 ton
• 9’ x 80’
• 150 kilowatts: Used to dim the Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Eniac.jpg
lights in the City of
Philadelphia down when it ran
Transistor – 1947
• Invented by Shockly,
Bardeen, and Brattain at
the Bell Labs in the US
• Compared to vacuum
tubes:
• much smaller size
• more reliability
• much lower power
consumption
• much lower cost
• All modern computers are
made of miniaturized
transistors
• For this discovery they won
the 1956 Nobel Prize in
physics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Replica-of-first-transistor.jpg#file
IC on Intel chip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit
From Tubes to Transistors and beyond
• Tubes replaced mechanicals
• Transistors replaced tubes
• What is going to replace the transistors?
What's the next big thing?
Floppy Disk - 1950
• Invented at the Imperial University in Tokyo
by Yoshiro Nakamats
• Provided faster access to programs and
data as compared with magnetic tape
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Floppy_disk_90mm.jpg
UNIVAC 1 - 1951
• UNIVersal Automatic Computer
• Echert & Mauchly Computer Company
• First computer designed for commercial
applications
• First computer that could not only
manipulate numbers but text data as well
• Max speed: 1905 operations/sec
• Cost: US$1,000,000
• 5000 tubes. 943 cu ft. 8 tons. 100 kilowatts
• Between 1951-57, 48 were sold
ARPANET - 1969
• A network of networks
• The grand-daddy of the today’s global
Internet
• A network of around 60,000 computers
developed by the US Dept of Defense to
facilitate communications between
research organizations and universities
Intel 4004 - 1971
• The first microprocessor
• Microprocessor: A complete computer on
a chip
• Speed: 750 kHz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004
Altair 8800 - 1975
• The commercially
available 1st PC
• Based on the Intel
8080
• Cost $397
• Had 256 bytes of
memory; my PC at
home has a million
times more RAM
(Random Access
Memory)
Cray 1 - 1976
• The first commercial
supercomputer
• Supercomputers are state-ofthe-art machines designed to
perform calculations as fast as
the current technology allows
• Used to solve extremely
complex tasks: weather
prediction, simulation of atomic
explosions; aircraft design;
movie animation
• Cray 1 could do 167 million
calculations a second; the
current state-of the-art
machines can do many trillion
(1012) calculations per second
IBM PC & MS DOS - 1981
• IBM PC: The tremendously popular PC;
precursor of 95% of the PC’s in use today.
• MS DOS: The tremendously popular operating
system that came bundled with the IBM PC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC
Apple Macintosh - 1984
•The first popular, user-friendly,
WIMP-based PC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_macintosh
• Based on the WIMP
(Windows, Icons, Menus,
Pointing Device) ideas
first developed for the
Star computer at Xerox
PARC (1981)
World Wide Web -1989
• Tim Berners Lee – British physicist
• 1989 – At the European Center for Nuclear
Energy Research (CERN) in Geneva
• 1993 - The 1st major browser “Mosaic” was
developed at the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Deep Blue -vs- Kasparov - 1997
• In 1997 Deep Blue, a supercomputer
designed by IBM, beat Gary Kasparov, the
World Chess Champion
That computer was exceptionally fast, did
not get tired or bored. It just kept on
analyzing the situation and kept on
searching until it found the perfect move
from its list of possible moves
The next milestone?
•
•
•
•
Mechanical computing
Electro-mechanical computing
Vacuum tube computing
Transistor computing
(the current state-of the-art)
• Quantum computing
The Future – Quantum Computing?
• QUANTUM MECHANICS is the branch of physics which
describes the activity of subatomic particles, i.e. the
particles that make up atoms
• Quantum computers may one day be millions of times
more efficient than the current state-of-the-art
computers.
• For example, finding the largest from a list of four
numbers:
• current computers require on average 2 to 3 steps to get
to the answer
• Whereas, the quantum computer may be able to do that
in a single step
• Suggested reading:
www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Quantum_Computing_with_Molecules.pdf