Classification of Computers

Computers

What is a computer?
Computer is an electronic device that accept inputs
and process data through series of commands known
as program. It converts data into information as an
output and stored it for safekeeping and use.
 Computers

First Generation Computers (1940s-1950s)

First electronic computers used vacuum
tubes, and they were huge and complex.

The first general purpose electronic

computer was ENIAC (Electronic Numerical
Integrator and Computer). It was program
using plugboards and switches, supporting
input from an IBM card reader, and output to
an IBM card punch. It took up 167 sqm.,
weighed 27 tons, and consuming 150 KW of
power.
It used thousands of vacuum tubes,
crystal diodes, relays, resistors, and
capacitors.
 Computers

Second Generation Computers (1955-1960)

The second generation of computers
came about to the invention of the
transistor, which then started replacing
vacuum tubes in computer design.
Transistor computers consumed far less
power, produced far less hear, and were
much smaller compared to the first
generation, although still big by today’s
standards.
The first transistor computer was created
at the university of Manchester in 1953. The
most popular transistor computer was IBM
1401. IBM also created the first disk drive in
1956, the IBM 350 RAMAC.
 Computers

Third Generation Computers (1960s)

The invention of the integrated circuits
(ICs), also known as microchips, covered
the way for computers as we know them
today. Making circuits to be much smaller
and more practical to produce.

The IBM’s System/360 were based on

both microchip and transistors. They were
much smaller and cheaper than the first and
the second generation of computers.
 Computers

Fourth Generation Computers (1971-1976)

The first microchip-based central
processing units (CPU) consisted of multiple
microchips for the different CPU
components. The drive for ever greater
integration and miniaturization led towards
single-chip processor.

The first single-chip CPU or

microprocessor was Intel 4004. It had 2,250
transistor, four-bit addressing, 108 KHz clock
speed.
 Computers

Fifth Generation Computers (Present)

The most significant of those shifts was
the invention of the Graphical User Interface
(GUI), and the mouse as a way of controlling
it.
Dough Engelbart and his team at the
Stanford Research Lab developed the first
mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI),
demonstrated in 1968.

Microsoft later caught on and produced

Windows, resulting in improvements to the
graphical user interface (GUI) to this day.
 Classification of Computers

Analog Computer

Digital Computer

Hybrid Computer
 Analog Computer

Analog Computer is a form of computer that uses

continuously changeable aspects of physical phenomena
such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to
model the problem being solved.
In contrast, digital computers represent varying quantities
symbolically, as their numerical values change.
As an analog computer does not use discrete values, but
rather continuous values, processes cannot be reliably
repeated with exact equivalence as they can with Turing
machines. Analog computers are especially well-suited to
representing situations described by differential equations.
Occasionally, they were used when a differential equation
proved very difficult to solve by traditional means.
 Analog Computer

Analog Computers were widely used in scientific and

industrial applications where digital computers of the time
lacked sufficient performance

Analog computers can have very wide range of complexity.

Slide rules and nomograms are the simplest, while naval
gunfire control computers were among the most complicated.
 Analog Computer

The advent of digital computing made simple analog

computers obsolete as early as the 1950s and 1960s.

Although analog computers remained in use in some specific

applications, like the flight computer in aircraft, and
synthetic aperture radar remained the domain of analog
computing well into the 1980s, since digital computers were
insufficient for the task during that time.
 Analog Computer

Page from the Bombardier's

Information File (BIF) that
describes the components
and controls of the Norden
bombsight. The Norden
bombsight was a highly
sophisticated
optical/mechanical analog
computer used by the United
States Army Air Force
during World War II,
the Korean War, and
the Vietnam War to aid the
pilot of a bomber aircraft in
dropping bombs accurately
 Analog Computer

Analog computing machine at the Lewis

Flight Propulsion Laboratory circa 1949.
 Analog Computer

Polish analog computer AKAT-1

 Analog Computer

George @MIT
 Analog Computer

Old TV Station
 Analog Computer

Coal Power Plant – Control Room

 Analog Computer

Hydro Power Plant – Control Room

 Digital Computer

Digital Computer is a form of computer that performs

calculations and logical operations with quantities represented
as digits, usually in binary number system.

Modern Digital Computers are used as control systems for a

wide variety of industrial and consumer devices.

This includes simple special purpose devices like microwave

ovens and remote controls, factory devices such
as industrial robots and computer-aided design,
and also general purpose devices like personal
computers and mobile devices such as smartphones.
Digital Computer
Digital Computer
 Digital Computer

Data Centers – Cloud Farm

 Digital Computer

SCADA (Supervisory control and data acquisition) – Control Room

 Digital Computer

MES (Manufacturing Execution System) – Control System

 Digital Computer

MES (Manufacturing Execution System) – Control System

 Digital Computer

MES (Manufacturing Execution System) – Control System

 Digital Computer

MES (Manufacturing Execution System) – Control System

 Hybrid Computer

Hybrid Computer (Analog + Digital) are computers that

exhibit features of analog computers and Digital
computers. The digital component normally serves as the
controller and provides logical and numerical operations, while
the analog component often serves as a solver of differential
equations and other mathematically complex equations.

In general, analog computers are extraordinarily fast, since

they are able to solve most mathematically complex equations
at the rate at which a signal traverses the circuit, which is
generally an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. On the
other hand, the precision of analog computers is not good;
they are limited to three, or at most, four digits of precision.
 Hybrid Computer

Digital Computer can be built to take the solution of

equations to almost unlimited precision, but quite slowly
compared to analog computers.

Generally, complex mathematical equations are approximated

using iterative methods which take huge numbers of
iterations, depending on how good the initial "guess" at the
final value is and how much precision is desired. (This initial
guess is known as the numerical "seed".)
 Hybrid Computer

For many real-time operations in the 20th century,

such digital calculations were too slow to be of much use
(e.g., for very high frequency phased array radars or for
weather calculations), but the precision of
an analog computer is insufficient.

Hybrid computers can be used to obtain a very good but

relatively imprecise 'seed' value, using an analog computer
front-end, which is then fed into a digital computer iterative
process to achieve the final desired degree of precision
 Hybrid Computer

With a three or four digit, highly accurate numerical seed, the

total digital computation time to reach the desired precision is
dramatically reduced, since many fewer iterations are
required.

Hybrid computers should be distinguished from hybrid

systems. The latter may be no more than a digital computer
equipped with an analog-to-digital converter at the input
and/or a digital-to-analog converter at the output, to convert
analog signals for ordinary digital signal processing, and
conversely, e.g., for driving physical control systems, such
as servomechanisms.
 Hybrid Computer

VLSI hybrid computer chip

Recently in 2015, researchers at Columbia University
published a paper on a small scale hybrid computer in 65 nm
CMOS technology.
This 4th-order VLSI hybrid computer contains 4 integrator
blocks, 8 multiplier/gain-setting blocks, 8 fanout blocks for
distributing current-mode signals, 2 ADCs, 2 DACs and 2
SRAMs blocks. Digital controllers are also implemented on the
chip for executing the external instructions.
A robot experiment in the paper demonstrates the use of the
hybrid computing chip in today's emerging low-power
embedded applications.
 Hybrid Computer

The first desktop hybrid computing system was the Hycomp

250, released by Packard Bell in 1961. 

Another early example was the HYDAC 2400, an integrated

hybrid computer released by EAI in 1963.

Late in the 20th century, hybrids dwindled with the increasing

capabilities of digital computers including digital signal
processors.
Hybrid Computer
Hybrid Computer
Hybrid Computer
Hybrid Computer
Hybrid Computer
Hybrid Computer
Hybrid Computer
Classification of Computers: On the Basis of Size

Super Computer

Mainframe Computer

Mini Computer

Micro Computer
Classification of Computers: On the Basis of Size

Super
  Computer is a computer with a high level of
performance compared to a general-purpose computer.
Performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-
point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million
instructions per second (MIPS). 

As of 2017, there are supercomputers which can perform

up to nearly a hundred quadrillions of FLOPS, measured
in P(eta) FLOPS.

As of November 2017, all of the world's fastest 500

supercomputers run Linux-based operating systems.
 Super Computer

Additional research is being conducted in China, United

States, European Union, Taiwan and Japan to build even
faster, more powerful and more technologically
superior exascale supercomputers.

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,
biological macromolecules, polymers, and crystals),),
 Super Computer

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.
Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s, and for
several decades the fastest were made by Seymour
Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), Cray
Research and subsequent companies bearing his name
or monogram. The first such machines were highly tuned
conventional designs that ran faster than their more
general-purpose contemporaries. Through the 1960s,
they began to add increasing amounts
of parallelism with one to four processors being typical.
Super Computer
Super Computer
 Mainframe Computer

Mainframe
  Computers (colloquially referred to as "big
iron") are computers used primarily by large
organizations for critical applications; bulk data
processing, such as census, industry and consumer
statistics, enterprise resource planning (ERP);
and transaction processing. They are larger and have
more processing power than some other classes of
computers: minicomputers, servers, workstations,
and personal computers.

The term originally referred to the large cabinets called

"main frames" that housed the central processing unit
(CPU) and main memory (RAM) of early computers.[
 Mainframe Computer

Most large-scale computer system architectures were

established in the 1960s, but continue to evolve.
Mainframe computers are often used as servers.

Modern mainframe design is characterized less by raw,

single-task, computational speed (typically defined
as MIPS (millions of instructions per second) rate
or FLOPS (floating-point operations per second)), and
more by:
 Mainframe Computer

• Redundant internal engineering resulting in high

reliability and security

• Extensive input-output ("I/O") facilities with the ability

to offload to separate engines

• Strict backward compatibility with older software

• High hardware and computational utilization rates

through virtualization to support massive throughput.
 Mainframe Computer

In the late 1950s, mainframes had only a rudimentary

interactive interface (the console), and used sets
of punched cards, paper tape, or magnetic tape to
transfer data and programs

By the early 1970s, many mainframes

acquired interactive user terminals operating
as timesharing computers, supporting hundreds of
users simultaneously along with batch processing.

Users gained access through keyboard/typewriter

terminals and specialized text terminal CRT displays with
integral keyboards, or later from personal
computers equipped with terminal emulation software
 Mainframe Computer

Modern mainframes can run multiple different instances

of operating systems at the same time. This technique
of virtual machines allows applications to run as if they
were on physically distinct computers.

Mainframes are designed to handle very high volume

input and output (I/O) and emphasize throughput
computing. Since the late-1950s, mainframe
designs have included subsidiary hardware
(called channels or peripheral processors) which
manage the I/O devices, leaving the CPU free to deal
only with high-speed memory..
 Mainframe Computer

It is common in mainframe shops to deal with

massive databases and files. Gigabyte to terabyte-size
record files are not unusual.

Compared to a typical PC, mainframes commonly have

hundreds to thousands of times as much data
storage online, and can access it reasonably quickly.
Other server families also offload I/O processing and
emphasize throughput computing.
Mainframe Computer
 Mainframe Computer

General Electric 635 Mainframe computer

Mainframe Computer
 Mini Computer

Mini
  Computer is a mid-sized computer. In size and power, it
lie between workstations and mainframes. In general a
minicomputer is a multiprocessing system capable of
supporting from 4 to about 200 users simultaneously.

When single-chip CPU microprocessors appeared, beginning

with the Intel 4004 in 1971, the term "minicomputer" came to
mean a machine that lies in the middle range of the
computing spectrum, in between the smallest mainframe
computers and the microcomputers. The term
."minicomputer"
[
is little used today; the contemporary term
for this class of system is "midrange computer", such as the
higher-end SPARC, Power Architecture and Itanium-based
systems from Oracle, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
Mini Computer
Mini Computer
 Micro Computer

Micro
  Computers or Personal Computer is a small,
relatively inexpensive computer with a microprocessor as
its central processing unit (CPU). It includes a
microprocessor, memory, and minimal input/output (I/O)
circuitry mounted on a single printed circuit board.
Microcomputers became popular in the 1970s and 1980s
with the advent of increasingly powerful microprocessors.

Desktop Computer is a personal computer sufficient to

fit on a desk.
Laptop Computer is a portable computer complete with
integrated screen and keyboard. It is smaller than a
desktop computer and larger than a notebook computer.
 Micro Computer

Palmtop Computer/Digital Diary /Notebook

/Netbook /PDA are hand-sized computer. Palmtops have
no keyboard but the screen serves both as an input and
output device.

Workstations is a terminal or a computer in a network. In

this context, workstation is just a generic term for user’s
machine (client machine) in contrast to a “server” or
“mainframe”.
Micro Computer
Micro Computer
Micro Computer
Micro Computer
Classification of Computers: On the Basis of Purpose

General-Purpose Computer

Special-Purpose Computer
 General-Purpose Computer

General-Purpose Computer

Most computers in use today are General-Purpose

computers — those built for a great variety of processing
jobs or functions and operations. Simply by using a general
purpose computer and different software, various tasks can
be accomplished, including writing and editing (word
processing), manipulating facts in a data base, tracking
manufacturing inventory, making scientific calculations, or
even controlling organization’s security system, electricity
consumption, and building temperature.
 Special-Purpose Computer

Special-Purpose Computer
As the name states, a Special-Purpose Computer are
designed to be task specific and most of the times their job
is to solve one particular problem. They are also known as
dedicated computers, because they are dedicated to perform
a single task over and over again. 

Such a computer system would be useful in playing graphic

intensive Video Games, traffic lights control system,
navigational system in an aircraft, weather forecasting,
satellite launch / tracking, oil exploration, and in automotive
industries, keeping time in a digital watch, or Robot
helicopter.
 Special-Purpose Computer

While a special purpose computer may have many of the

same features found in a general purpose computer, its
applicability to a particular problem is a function of its design
rather than to a stored program. The instructions that control
it are built directly into the computer, which makes for a more
efficient and effective operation. 

They perform only one function and therefore cut down on

the amount of memory needed and also the amount of
information which can be input into them. As these computers
have to perform only one task, therefore, they are fast in
processing. A drawback of this specialization, however, is the
computer’s lack of versatility. It cannot be used to perform
other operations.
Special-Purpose Computer
Special-Purpose Computer
Special-Purpose Computer
Special-Purpose Computer
 Special-Purpose Computer

Video (self-parking slippers)

Special-Purpose Computer