SHOOTING STARS

AAFREEN SHAIKH
X:C
ROLL NO.46
TOPIC : FIFTH GENERATION
COMPUTERS.
 Fifth Generation Computers
(1984-1990)
The development of the next generation of computer
systems is characterized mainly by the acceptance of
parallel processing. Until this time parallelism was limited
to pipelining and vector processing, or at most to a few
processors sharing jobs. The fifth generation saw the
introduction of machines with hundreds of processors that
could all be working on different parts of a single program.
The scale of integration in semiconductors continued at an
incredible pace - by 1990 it was possible to build chips with
a million components - and semiconductor memories
became standard on all computers.
• Even the most enthusiastic home
computer owners have little idea of
the link their machines represent in
the historical chain of computer
technology. It is a chain that runs
from the ancient abacus and Charles
Babbage's Analytical Engine of the
nineteenth century, through the
Apples and Commodores of the
present, all the way to the awe-
inspiring fifth-generation computers
of the future.
• We do not even need the full capabilities
of a computer language to express any
algorithm in a program. This idea had its
origin in the Structure Theorem first
presented in a classic mathematical paper
by C. Bohm and G. Jacopini with the
ominous title Flow Diagrams, Turing
Machines, and Languages with Only Two
Formation Rules.
• The Fifth-Generation Computer was to be the end
result of a massive government/industry research
project in Japan during the 1980s, which aimed
to create an "epoch-making computer" that would
leapfrog more evolutionary designs by using the
Prolog programming language to create a
desktop system with supercomputer-like
performance and usable artificial intelligence
capabilities.
• The term "fifth generation" was intended to
convey the system as being a leap beyond
existing machines. Computers using vacuum
tubes were called the first generation, transistors
and diodes the second, ICs the third, and those
using microprocessors the fourth. Whereas
previous computer generations had focused on
increasing the number of logic elements in a
single CPU, the fifth generation, it was widely
believed at the time, would instead turn to
massive numbers of CPUs for added performance
• The Japanese have been working feverishly on a
billion-dollar project, with a target date of 1989,
to design and build a computer that is not only a
hundred times faster than a Cray but contains AI
software as well. This software would be capable
of simulating experts in fields like medicine or
geology, playing games like chess or Go at a
grandmaster level, analyzing documents for
factual errors as well as grammatical and spelling
errors, and translating documents from one
language into another.
• It all sounds great, but the Japanese are
making a few blunders along the way. To
understand how, we should take a look at
programming languages in general and
their relationship to AI 5th Generation
Computers.