Course Code : GEEL 1

Course Title : LIVING IN THE IT ERA

MIDTEM PERIODIC COVERAGE

MODULE No. 05
TITLE: CLASSIFICATION OF COMPUTERS
INTRODUCTION Computers differ based on their data processing abilities.
They are classified according to purpose, data handling and
functionality.

According to purpose, computers are either general purpose

or specific purpose. General purpose computers are designed
to perform a range of tasks. They have the ability to store
numerous programs, but lack in speed and efficiency. Specific
purpose computers are designed to handle a specific problem
or to perform a specific task. A set of instructions is built
into the machine.

According to data handling, computers are analog, digital or

hybrid. Analog computers work on the principle of measuring,
in which the measurements obtained are translated into data.
Modern analog computers usually employ electrical
parameters, such as voltages, resistances or currents, to
represent the quantities being manipulated. Such computers
do not deal directly with the numbers. They measure
continuous physical magnitudes. Digital computers are those
that operate with information, numerical or otherwise,
represented in a digital form. Such computers process data
into a digital value (in 0s and 1s). They give the results
with more accuracy and at a faster rate. Hybrid computers
incorporate the measuring feature of an analog computer and
counting feature of a digital computer. For computational
purposes, these computers use analog components and for
storage, digital memories are used.
LEARNING ➢ Describe the classification of computers according to
OUTCOMES purpose, type of data handled and capacity or size.
LEARNING 1. Identify the main types of computers, including
OBJECTIVES supercomputer, mainframe, microcomputer, etc.
2. Identify types of computers, how they process information
and how individual computers interact with other computing
systems and devices
Discussion/Situational analysis/Content Etc.:

Type Specifications

PC (Personal It is a single user computer system having a

Computer) or Micro- moderately powerful microprocessor. It is termed as
Computers a computer that is equipped microprocessor as its
CPU.

Workstation It is also a single user computer system, similar

to the personal computer, however, has a more
powerful microprocessor.

Mini-Computer It is a multi-user computer system, capable of

supporting hundreds of users simultaneously.

Main Frame It is a multi-user computer system, capable of

supporting hundreds of users simultaneously.
Software technology is different from minicomputer.

Super-Computer It is an extremely fast computer, which can execute

hundreds of millions of instructions per second.

PC (Personal Computer)

A PC can be defined as a small, relatively inexpensive computer designed for

an individual user. PCs are based on the microprocessor technology that enables
manufacturers to put an entire CPU on one chip. Businesses use personal
computers for word processing, accounting, desktop publishing, and for running
spreadsheet and database management applications. At home, the most popular
use for personal computers is playing games and surfing the Internet.

Although personal computers are designed as single-user systems, these systems

are normally linked together to form a network. In terms of power, nowadays
high-end models of the Macintosh and PC offer the same computing power and
graphics capability as low-end workstations by Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-
Packard, and Dell.
Workstation

The workstation is a computer used for engineering applications (CAD/CAM),

desktop publishing, software development, and other such types of applications
which require a moderate amount of computing power and relatively high-quality
graphics capabilities.

Workstations generally come with a large, high-resolution graphics screen, a

large amount of RAM, inbuilt network support, and a graphical user interface.
Most workstations also have mass storage device such as a disk drive, but a
special type of workstation, called diskless workstations, comes without a disk
drive.

Common operating systems for workstations are UNIX and Windows NT. Like PC,
workstations are also single-user computers like PC but are typically linked
together to form a local area network, although they can also be used as stand-
alone systems.

Minicomputer

It is a midsize multi-processing system capable of supporting up to 250 users

simultaneously.
Mainframe

The mainframe is very large in size and is an expensive computer capable of

supporting hundreds or even thousands of users simultaneously. Mainframe
executes many programs concurrently and supports much simultaneous execution
of programs.

Supercomputer

Supercomputers are one of the fastest computers currently available.

Supercomputers are very expensive and are employed for specialized applications
that require an immense amount of mathematical calculations (number-crunching).

For example, weather forecasting, scientific simulations, (animated)graphics,

fluid dynamic calculations, nuclear energy research, electronic design, and
analysis of geological data (e.g. in petrochemical prospecting).

The computer systems can be classified on the following basis:

1. On the basis of size.

2. On the basis of functionality.
3. On the basis of data handling.
Classification on the basis of Size:

1. Super computers: The super computers are the highest performing system.
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance compared
to a general-purpose computer. The actual Performance of a supercomputer
is measured in FLOPS instead of MIPS. All of the world’s fastest 500
supercomputers run Linux-based operating systems. Additional research
is being conducted in China, the US, the EU, Taiwan and Japan to build
even faster, more high performing and more technologically superior
supercomputers. Supercomputers actually play an important role in the
field of computation, and are used for intensive computation tasks in
various fields, including quantum mechanics, weather forecasting,
climate research, oil and gas exploration, molecular modeling, and
physical simulations. Throughout the history, supercomputers have been
essential in the field of the cryptanalysis.

MIPS

MIPs (million instructions per second) is the general measurement or

benchmark of how many instructions a processor can handle in a single
second. Despite how useful this idea might seem; it is not commonly
used anymore because there is no proper way of measuring MIPs. In
general, a MIPs rating was only used as a basic rule of thumb for
computer performance, since a higher number did not mean much for most
real-world situations. In the business world, however, being able to
calculate a MIPs rating allowed businesses to know the cost of computing
from the servers they were using.

FLOPS

The clock speed of a processor is measured in megahertz and gigahertz,

but that by itself is not an accurate way to gauge computer performance.
FLOPs (floating-point operations per second) is yet another necessary
factor needed to help measure the performance of a processor as shown
in Figure 1. A floating-point number is a number that has floating
decimal points, such as 0.008. A FLOPs benchmark only measures the
floating-point operations and not the integers, which means it too
cannot solely gauge computer performance either.

It makes more sense to measure today's processor performance in FLOPs

because clock speed frequencies do not truly measure raw performance.
A FLOPs measurement most accurately represents computer performance
since floating point math is standard in a variety of programs or
processes that we use today. It is especially useful for scientific and
real-time applications, such as gaming or image processing.

Characteristics of Supercomputer

➢ They can support more than a hundred users at a time.

 ➢ These machines are capable of handling the massive amount of calculations
that are beyond the human capabilities, i.e., the human is unable to
solve such extensive calculations.
➢ Many individuals can access supercomputers at the same time.

Features of Supercomputer

➢ They have more than 1 CPU (Central Processing Unit) which contains
instructions so that it can interpret instructions and execute arithmetic
and logical operations.
➢ The supercomputer can support extremely high computation speed of CPUs.
➢ They can operate on pairs of lists of numbers instead of pairs of numbers.
➢ They were used initially in applications related to national security,
nuclear weapon design, and cryptography. But nowadays they are also
employed by the aerospace, automotive and petroleum industries.

Uses of Supercomputers

Because of their superiority, supercomputers are not intended for your

everyday tasks. They handle exhaustive scientific applications that
require complex and real-time processing.

➢ In the field of science, researchers use these machines to compute and

model properties of biological compounds like protein and human blood.
They are also used to interpret new diseases and strains, and predict
illness behavior and treatment.
➢ The military use supercomputers to test new aircraft, tanks, and a host
of weaponry and camouflage. They also use them to understand the effects
they will have on soldiers and wars. These machines are also used to
help encrypt and decrypt sensitive data.
➢ In entertainment, supercomputers are used to help make a flawless online
gaming experience. Games like World of Warcraft demand intense
processing. When thousands of gamers around the world are playing,
supercomputers help stabilize the game performance.
➢ Meteorologists use them to simulate weather behavior. They can also be
used to predict earthquakes.
➢ Scientists use them to simulate and test the effects of nuclear weapon
detonation.
➢ Scientists also use them to simulate the events of the Big Bang and
other space related projects.
➢ Hollywood uses supercomputers to create realistic animations.
➢ The famous supercomputers Deep Blue and Watson defeated chess
Grandmaster Gary Kasparov and quiz expert Ken Jennings respectively.

Top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world known for their supercomputing

capabilities:

1. Fugaku was jointly developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu. Named after an

alternative name for Mount Fuji, the supercomputer built with the
 Fujitsu A64FX microprocessor. This CPU is based on the ARM version
8.2A processor architecture and adopts the Scalable Vector Extensions
for supercomputers. Installed at RIKEN Center for Computational
Science (R-CCS) in Kobe, Japan, Fugaku is designed for applications
that will address high-priority social and scientific issues.

2. Sierra, one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, which is developed

for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for use by the National
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as the second Advanced
Technology System. The system provides computational resources that
are vital for nuclear weapon scientists to fulfill the NNSA’s
stockpile stewardship mission through simulation instead of
underground testing.

3. Sunway TaihuLight, a Chinese supercomputer, which is ranked third in

the TOP500 list, as of November 2018, with a LINPACK benchmark rating
of 93 petaflops. The supercomputer uses a total of 40,960 Chinese-
designed SW26010 manycore 64-bit RISC processors based on the Sunway
architecture.

4. HPC5, also called High-Performance Computing – layer 5, is a set of

parallel computing units with a peak processing power of 51.7
petaFlops. Combined with the supercomputing system in operation since
2018 (HPC4), the peak computational capacity of the infrastructure
totals 70 petaFlops: that is, 70 million billion mathematical
operations performed in a single second. Located inside Eni’s Green
Data Center has a peak power of over 50 petaflops, HPC5 is the most
powerful industrial supercomputer in the world.

5. Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by the China’s National

University of Defense Technology, which processes at a great 33.9
petaflops, nearly twice the performance of the Titan or Sequoia, and
over 10 times the performance of Tianhe-1A.

6. Marconi100 supercomputer was developed by IBM using IBM POWER9

technology and NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs as the world’s smartest
AI supercomputer, the US Department of Energy’s Summit system, and
according to measurements conducted by CINECA. This will equip them
with additional computing resources to face socio-economic challenges
such as climate change, renewable energy, sustainable economics, and
precision medicine.

7. Summit, a supercomputer developed by IBM for use at Oak Ridge National

Laboratory, is capable of 200 petaFLOPS, making it the fastest
supercomputer in the world. Its current LINPACK benchmark is clocked
at 148.6 petaFLOPS. Summit provides scientists with incredible
computing power to solve challenges in energy, AI, human health, and
other research areas, that were impossible until now. Undeniably,
these discoveries will help shape the human understanding of the
 universe, bolster US economic competitiveness, and contribute to a
better future.

8. Piz Daint, a supercomputer in the Swiss National Supercomputing

Centre, has a computing power of 7.8 petaFlops, this means 7.8
quadrillion of mathematical operations per second. This supercomputer
has the potential to compute in one day over a modern laptop that
could compute in 900 years.

9. The Trinity supercomputer is aimed at providing an increased

computational capability for the NNSA Nuclear Security Enterprise in
support of ever-demanding workloads. Managed and operated by Los
Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories under the
Alliance for Computing at Extreme Scale (ACES) partnership, this
supercomputer’s capabilities are required for supporting the NNSA
Stockpile Stewardship program’s certification and assessments to
ensure that the nation’s nuclear stockpile is safe, reliable, and
secure.

10. Frontera is the fastest academic supercomputer located at the

University of Texas at Austin. The supercomputer is the joint
development of Dell EMC and Intel, funded by a US$60 million grant
from the National Science Foundation that would replace Stampede2 at
the University’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Deployed in
June 2019, Frontera is the 8th most powerful supercomputer in the
world and the fastest supercomputer on a university campus. It has
two computing subsystems, the primary computing system focused on
double-precision performance and the second subsystem focused on
single-precision streaming-memory computing. Additionally, Frontera
has multiple storage systems, along with interfaces to the cloud and
archive systems, and a set of application nodes for hosting virtual
servers.

2. Mainframe computers: These are commonly called as big iron, they are
usually used by big organizations for bulk data processing such as
statics, census data processing, transaction processing and are widely
used as the severs as these systems has a higher processing capability
as compared to the other classes of computers, most of these mainframe
architectures were established in 1960s, the research and development
worked continuously over the years and the mainframes of today are far
more better than the earlier ones, in size, capacity and efficiency.

Uses of Mainframes:

They are used in large organizations where thousands of clients have to

access data simultaneously.
For example:
 ➢ Performing ATM cash withdrawals and deposits. During the process,
communication between the mainframe and remote computer will help
accomplish the financial transactions at hand.
➢ Business transactions that use credit cards or pre-paid cards.
➢ Online electronic transactions.
➢ Cloud storage.
➢ Handling of patient records in major hospitals.
➢ Making reservations and travel schedules for airline companies.
➢ Manipulation and tallying of data for census and electoral
purposes.

3. Mini computers: A minicomputer is also known as mini. It is a class of

small computers that was introduced into the world in the mid-1960s. A
minicomputer is a computer which has all the features of a large size
computer, but its size is smaller than those. A minicomputer lies
between the mainframe and the microcomputer because its size is smaller
than the former one and larger than the latter one. A minicomputer is
also called as a mid-range computer. Minicomputers are mainly multi-
users systems where more than one user can work simultaneously. Mini
computer examples: IBM’s AS/400e, Honeywell200, TI-990.

Minicomputer can support multi-users at a time or you can say that

minicomputer is a multiprocessing system. Also, the power of processing
of minicomputers is not larger than the power of mainframe and
supercomputers. These minicomputers can do time-sharing, batch
processing, and online processing.

Size of Minicomputer

The size of minicomputers can range from 12 inches in width to less

than 7. This small size is especially attractive to students because
they can use it anywhere, they want.
History of Minicomputer

The term minicomputer was come to know in the 1960s and through that
time only the small computers are made by making the use of transistors
and core memory technologies. The first minicomputer which was
developed was known as Digital Equipment Corporation, which was made
by using transistors and it costs from the US $16000.
Types of minicomputer

The types of minicomputer are- tablet PC, Desktop minicomputers, cell

phones, notebooks, high-end mP3 players, etc.
Uses of minicomputer

Each person using a minicomputer has their own terminal attached by

wires or via a modem to the computer proper. (A terminal isn’t a
computer-it’s basically just a keyboard and a monitor) The minicomputer
spends a little bit of time on one person’s task, then moves on to the
next, and so on, juggling the work based on which jobs it thinks are
most important. If you’re the only one using a minicomputer, this can
be one fast machine.
But once many users (people) are “on” the system, the thing begins to
slow down-you may type something and then wait for a minute or more
before you see a response on the screen. Minicomputers used to be the
only option for companies. Now, many firms are turning to networks of
personal computers to accomplish the same thing faster and cheaper.

They were used for three primary purposes:

Process Control

Minicomputers are primarily used by the companies for the manufacturing

control of the process. Process Control has two primary functions- data
acquisition and feedback.

Example - factories make use of minicomputers to control the

manufacturing process. If any problem appears in any part of the
process, then it recognizes the change and made required adjustments.

Data Management

Minicomputers that we use for the data management can do any task
regarding data like it can take, restore or generate data.

Communication

Minicomputers act as an interface between the human operator and a

larger processor. The user can run operations such as error checking
with the help of minicomputer and then can use the device for making
adjustments also.

The other uses are as follows:

o They are also used for scientific computations.

o Used for business-transaction processing.
o Used for database management.
o Used for file handling
o Used for engineering computations.

Characteristics of a minicomputer

o Its size is smaller than a mainframe or supercomputer.

o It is less expensive than mainframe or supercomputer.
o It is less powerful than mainframe or supercomputer and more
powerful than microcomputers and workstations.
o It can do several tasks at once.
 o It can be used by many people at one time.
o It is used by small enterprises.

Advantages of minicomputer

• They are easy to use.

• They can fit anywhere.
• They are small and very portable.
• They are easy to carry.
• As compared to their size, they are fast.
• They hold a charge for a long time.
• They did not require a carefully controlled operational environment.
• They are more reliable.

Disadvantages of minicomputer

• Some minicomputers don’t have USB ports.

• Minicomputers do not have any CD/DVD drive.
• The user may not be familiar with the operating system.
• The keyboard can be small for fast typists.
• In this, generally, there is not much storage on board.
• It can be too small to do certain projects.

4. Microcomputers: Micro Computer is a small computer. Your personal

computers are equivalent to the microcomputer. Mainframe and Mini
Computer is ancestor of microcomputer. Integrated Circuit fabrication
technology reduces the size of Mainframe and Minicomputer.

Technically, a microcomputer is a computer in which the CPU (central

processing unit, the brains of the computer) is contained on one single
chip, a microprocessor, input/output devices and storage (memory) unit.
All these components are important for a proper working of
microcomputer.

Classification on the basis of Functionality:

1. Servers: Servers are nothing but dedicated computers which are set-up
to offer some services to the clients. They are named depending on
the type of service they offered. Eg: security server, database
server.

2. Workstation: Those are the computers designed to primarily to be used

by single user at a time. They run multi-user operating systems. They
are the ones which we use for our day to day personal / commercial
work.

3. Information Appliances: They are the portable devices which are

designed to perform a limited set of tasks like basic calculations,
playing multimedia, browsing internet etc. They are generally referred
 as the mobile devices. They have very limited memory and flexibility
and generally run on “as-is” basis.

4. Embedded computers: They are the computing devices which are used in
other machines to serve limited set of requirements. They follow
instructions from the non-volatile memory and they are not required
to execute reboot or reset. The processing units used in such device
work to those basic requirements only and are different from the ones
that are used in personal computers- better known as workstations.

Classification on the basis of Data Handling:

1. Analog: An analog computer is a form of computer that uses the

continuously-changeable aspects of physical fact such as electrical,
mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved.
Anything that is variable with respect to time and continuous can be
claimed as analog just like an analog clock measures time by means of
the distance traveled for the spokes of the clock around the circular
dial.

2. Digital: A computer that performs calculations and logical operations

with quantities represented as digits, usually in the binary number
system of “0” and “1”, computer capable of solving problems by
processing information expressed in discrete form from manipulation
of the combinations of the binary digits, it can perform mathematical
calculations, organize and analyze data, control industrial and other
processes, and simulate dynamic systems such as global weather
patterns.

3. Hybrid: A computer that processes both analog and digital data, Hybrid
computer is a digital computer that accepts analog signals, converts
them to digital and processes them in digital form.
Reference/s:

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/classification-of-computers
https://study.com/academy/lesson/using-mips-flops-as-computer-performance-
parameters.html
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/classification-of-computers/
https://ecomputernotes.com/fundamental/introduction-to-computer/write-a-
detailed-note-on-classification-of-computers
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/top-10-fastest-supercomputers-world-watch-
2020/
https://ecomputernotes.com/fundamental/introduction-to-computer/microcomputer

Prepared by:

IT Instructors