Computer Generations
Computer generation is a gap between two major advancements in computer technology. It is a classification of computers into different groups according to their manufacturing date and the memory device and other hardware used in the computer device.
There are five generations of computers i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th generations.
First Generation of Computers (1940-1956)
First-generation computers are known for their vacuum tube technology and magnetic tapes for storage. Some features of this computer generation are:
- They were completely based on Vacuum Tube Technology
- They consumed great amount of electricity and generated a lot of heat
- They had very slow operating systems
- Operation speed was limited in milliseconds
- Input and Output devices were only limited in Punch Cards
- Binary or Machine language was used for programming such computers
- They were extremely bulky and non-portable
- Batch processing was introduced in this generation of computers
- They were not used commercially
- They were very unreliable and lacked versatility and speed
- Air-conditioning for the computers was a must
Example: UNIVAC-I, EDVAC, EDSAC, ENIAC, IBM 700 Series etc.
Second Generation of Computers
Second-generation computers were improved versions of first-generation computers which reduced the use of vacuum tubes with the invention of transistors as the main electronic component. Some features of this generation of computers are:
- They used transistors as main electronic component
- Due to use of transistors, size of computers reduced
- Computers consumed comparatively less energy than first generation and heat was also less generated
- Assembly language which is in mnemonics form was used for programming this generation computers
- They were portable and more energy efficient
- The processing speed was increased to microseconds from milliseconds
- Manually assembling of the computer parts was still mandatory
- They still required air-conditioning
- Magnetic Cores and Drums were used for storage of data
Example: IBM 1620, PDP 1, PDP 8, IBM 1401 etc.
Comments
Post a Comment