TYPES OF COMPUTER

-Analog Computer
An analog computer is a form of computer that uses the continuously-changeable aspects of physical
phenomena such as electrical,
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mechanical, or hydraulicquantities to model the problem being solved. In
contrast, digital computers represent varying quantities incrementally, as their numerical values change.
Mechanical analog computers were very important in gun fire control in World War II and the Korean War;
they were made in significant numbers. In particular, development of transistors made electronic analog
computers practical, and before digital computers had developed sufficiently, they were commonly used in
science and industry.
Analog computers can have a very wide range of complexity. Slide rules andnomographs are the simplest,
while naval gunfire control computers and large hybrid digital/analog computers were among the most
complicated.
Setting up an analog computer required scale factors to be chosen, along with initial conditionsthat is,
starting values. Another essential was creating the required network of interconnections between computing
elements. Sometimes it was necessary to re-think the structure of the problem so that the computer would
function satisfactorily. No variables could be allowed to exceed the computer's limits, and differentiation was
to be avoided, typically by rearranging the "network" of interconnects, using integrators in a different sense.
Running an electronic analog computer, assuming a satisfactory setup, started with the computer held with
some variables fixed at their initial values. Moving a switch released the holds and permitted the problem to
run. In some instances, the computer could, after a certain running time interval, repeatedly return to the
initial-conditions state to reset the problem, and run it again.

-Digital Computer
digital computer, any of a class of devices capable of solving problems by processing information in discrete form. It
operates on data, including magnitudes, letters, and symbols, that are expressed in binary formi.e., using only the two
digits 0 and 1. By counting, comparing, and manipulating these digits or their combinations according to a set of
instructions held in its memory, a digital computer can perform such tasks as to control industrial processes and regulate
the operations of machines; analyze and organize vast amounts of business data; and simulate the behaviour of dynamic
systems (e.g., global weather patterns and chemical reactions) in scientific research.
Functional elements
A typical digital computer system has four basic functional elements: (1) input-output equipment, (2) main memory, (3)
control unit, and (4) arithmetic-logic unit. Any of a number of devices is used to enter data and program instructions into
a computer and to gain access to the results of the processing operation. Common input devices include keyboards and
optical scanners; outputdevices include printers and cathode-ray tube and liquid-crystal display monitors. The information
received by a computer from its input unit is stored in the main memory or, if not for immediate use, in an
auxiliary storage device. The control unit selects and calls up instructions from the memory in appropriate sequence and
relays the proper commands to the appropriate unit. It also synchronizes the varied operating speeds of the input and
output devices to that of the arithmetic-logic unit (ALU) so as to ensure the proper movement of data through the entire
computer system. The ALU performs the arithmetic and logic algorithms selected to process the incoming data at extremely
high speedsin many cases in nanoseconds (billionths of a second). The main memory, control unit, and ALU together
make up the central processing unit (CPU) of most digital computer systems, while the input-output devices and auxiliary
storage units constitute peripheral equipment.

-SuperComputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of contemporary processing capacity particularly speed of calculation which
can happen at speeds of nanoseconds.
[clarification needed]

Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s, made initially and, for decades, primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data
Corporation (CDC), Cray Research and subsequent companies bearing his name or monogram. While the supercomputers of the
1970s used only a few processors, in the 1990s machines with thousands of processors began to appear and, by the end of the
20th century, massively parallel supercomputers with tens of thousands of "off-the-shelf" processors were the norm.
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As of
November 2013, China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer is the fastest in the world at 33.86 petaFLOPS, or 33.86 quadrillion floating
point operations per second.
Systems with massive numbers of processors generally take one of two paths: In one approach (e.g., in distributed computing), a
large number of discrete computers (e.g., laptops) distributed across a network (e.g., the Internet) devote some or all of their time
to solving a common problem; each individual computer (client) receives and completes many small tasks, reporting the results to
a central server which integrates the task results from all the clients into the overall solution.
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In another approach, a large
number of dedicated processors are placed in close proximity to each other (e.g. in a computer cluster); this saves considerable
time moving data around and makes it possible for the processors to work together (rather than on separate tasks), for example
in mesh and hypercube architectures.
The use of multi-core processors combined with centralization is an emerging trend; one can think of this as a small cluster (the
multicore processor in a smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc.) that both depends upon and contributes to the cloud.
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Supercomputers play an important role in the field of computational science, and are used for a wide range of computationally
intensive tasks in various fields, including quantum mechanics, weather forecasting, climate research, oil and gas
exploration, molecular modeling (computing the structures and properties of chemical compounds, biologicalmacromolecules,
polymers, and crystals), and physical simulations (such as simulations of the early moments of the universe, airplane and
spacecraft aerodynamics, the detonation of nuclear weapons, and nuclear fusion). Throughout their history, they have been
essential in the field of cryptanalysis.
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