previous present and future computer processor

Processor

Today, computers are a part of our lifestyle, but the first computer that was used was developed at the University of Pennsylvania in the year 1946.It had an ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And computer )processor. The reprogramming feature that is so extensively used today, was introduced by Alan Turing and John von Neumann with their teams. The von Neumann architecture is the basis of modern computers.

Computing technology has greatly advanced since 1951 by transforming from vacuum tube machines of 30 tons to microprocessors the size of a penny. They are cost effective than ever. Now found in every aspect of modern life, computer processors appear in everything from personal computers to video game consoles to coffee machines.

The evolution of the computer processor began with the knowing of the principles of electricity. Although there were thoughts on how this technology could be implemented for much of the 1900s, it was not until the 1960s and early 1970s that scientists were capable to put those ideas into activity.

Features:

First generation:

1.They used valves or vacuum tubes as their main electronic component.

2.They were large in size, slow in processing and had less storage capacity.

Example: ENIAC, UNIVAC, IBM 650 etc

Second generation:

1.  Transistors were used instead of Vacuum Tube.

2.  Processing speed is faster than First Generation Computers (Micro Second)

3.  Smaller in Size (51 square feet).

Example: IBM 1400 and 7000 Series, Control Data 3600 etc.

Third generation:

1.      They used Integrated Circuit (IC) chips in place of the transistors.

2.  The size was greatly reduced, the speed of processing was high, they were   more accurate and reliable.

3. Large Scale Integration (LSI) and Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) were also developed.

Example: IBM 360, IBM 370 etc.

Fourth generation:

   1.  They used Microprocessor (VLSI) as their main switching element.

2.  They have very high speed of processing; they are 100% accurate, reliable,   diligent and versatile.

Example: IBM PC, Apple-Macintosh etc.

Defference between first, second,third,fourth and Future generation:

1.First generation computers used vaccum tubes as memory device.

2.Second generation computers used transistor.

3.Third generation computers used integrated circuits.

4.Fourth generation computers used LSI and VLSI technologies.

5.Future generation computers will be using Ultra Large Scale Integration(ULSI) technology.

Next difference:

1.The operating speed was measured in milliseconds.

2.The operating speed was measured in microseconds.

3.These generation the operating speed was measured in nano seconds.

4.These generation the operating speed is measured in beyond picoseconds and MIPS(Million of instruction per seconds) and Multiprocessing and multiprogramming OS are used.

5.The speed will be extremely high in fifth generation computer.

Next difference:

1.They were extremely large and occupied a very large space.

2.They were smaller,faster and cheaper than first generation of computer.

3.They were smaller than second generation of computer,efficient and reliable.

4.4GL are also used.

5.The goal of fifth generation computers is develop machines that will be able to think and take decisions and it can perform large number of parallel processing.

The first processors were large machines that were rather slow by today's standards, though they represented a new move in computational power, which previously had to be done manually. England's Colossus Mark 1 and Mark 2, and America's ENIAC -- known as the first fully-functional computer.

UNIVAC, designed by the principle designers of the ENIAC, was the first computer made for commercial usefulness. Its processor was capable of 19,000 operations per second w/2.25 Mhz clock, and sold for millions of dollars. Another early computer was the IBM 650, which shipped first in 1954.

Second Generation processor:

Transistors, invented in 1947, began replacing vacuum tubes as early as 1955. Smaller in size, they were known as "minicomputers," but still needed several components and a dedicated room. One example of such computers was the IBM 1401. Another feature of this era was the PDP-1, released in 1946 with a processor comparable to 2 kilohertz -- 100,000 operations per second.

Integrated circuits place many individual units of a processor on a single chip, known as "microchips" in practice. The quantity of transistors per chip increased rapidly from tens in the early '60s to ten-thousands in the mid '70s. The final step in the development process, starting in the 1980s and continuing through the present, was "very large-scale integration." The development started with hundreds of thousands of transistors in the early 1980s, and proceeds beyond several billion transistors at the end of the first decade in the 21st century.

The microprocessor, or CPU,does the calculations necessary for running computer software. As an example of this, the newest available CPUs are over 1,000 times faster than their earliest counterparts.

 As microprocessors grown at the end of the 20th century, processor design has continued to evolve. Multiple core processors have two or more processing units working in parallel on a single chip. In addition, cell phones and other small devices have pioneered the "microcontroller:" a chip that contains a tiny processing unit as well as a small quantity of memory and combined I/O interfaces. These microcontrollers can be the size of a fingernail or even smaller.

The CPU's basic building block is the transistor--an electrical switch capable of representing 0s and 1s. The more transistors a processor has, the more data it can handle. Consider that the 4004 had 2,300 transistors, each 10,000 nanometers wide, while the fastest desktop processor as , Intel's Core i7 980X, has 1.17 billion transistors, each 32 nanometers wide.

Despite its being a calculator processor, Intel's 4004 is widely regarded as the first microprocessor because it could be used to run more than one application. Introduced in 1971, the 4004 had a clock speed of 0.74 MHz. It was a 4-bit chip and had 2,300 transistors.By the end of the 1970s, a new generation of faster processors arrived, the fastest of which was Intel's 8086, at 5 MHz.

Intel released the 8088 chip in 1979. The 8088 was a 16-bit processor and contained 29,000 transistors. This was the chip that was chosen for the first IBM PC.

The Intel Pentium was released in 1993 as a 32-bit processor with 3.21 million transistors. Two years later Intel's competitor, AMD, released their AM5x86 chip which performed comparably to Pentium processors, but was capable to be installed on older 486 boards.

The Intel Pentium M was released in 2003 and was designed specifically with mobile devices in mind.

There are many different processors on the market. There are some that have Intel Processors, some that have AMD Processors and amongst those two there are a lot of variations. The speed which is called the clock speed and that will commonly right now be between 2.0 and 3.0 gigahertz maybe a little bit higher on some of newer end processors. Now that that number tells maybe 3.0 GHZ, it tells how fast that processor struggles through instruction, how fast it works. So higher that number the improve because that means process will be faster. Now between the two also have on Intel have dual core processors and that basically two processors in one Now what that will allow it to do is to execute basically two distinct programs at a time. Those are typically a little more costly, they even go up to quad core processors now on some best ops which means they can execute four different instructions at a time which basically will speed the total use of the computer. Now also to see 32 bit and 64 bit processes. Now the difference between these two is the size of the numbers that they are able to work on and that might not sound like a big deal but it actually is. The operating system has to be 64 bit compatible. If some programs that were written for 32 bit or written for 64 bit might not work on the other one.

Multi-core CPUs integrated multiple processors on one chip to gain the amount of operations they can perform at the same time. The first PC processor to use this technology was Intel's Pentium 840. Multi-core processors range from two to six cores, while at least one server processor, made by Tilera, contains 100 cores.