Chapter 2

Computer Evolution and

Performance
Pascaline 1642
Babbage Enigine
ENIAC
Harvard Mark 1
IBM System/360
Intel Core i 7
Evolution of Computer System
Inside a laptop
• Mobile apps, video games, spreadsheets,
electronics, and accurate weather
forecasts: that’s just a sampling of the
life-changing things made possible by the
reliable, exponential growth in the power
of computer chips over the past five
decades.
• The continual cramming of more silicon
transistors onto chips, known as Moore’s
Law has been the feedstock of exuberant
innovation in computing.
Moore’s Law
Transister
Moore’s law
Block Diagram of a Computer System
Inside the Processor
Role of ALU
Role of Control Unit
Inside Memory Unit
Types of Memory
Examples of memory
Typical I/O Device Data Rates
Input Unit
Examples of Input
Output Unit
Examples of Output Unit
Performance Balance
• Processor speed increased
• Memory capacity increased
• Memory speed lags behind processor
speed
x86 Evolution (1)
• 8080
— first general purpose microprocessor
— 8 bit data path
— Used in first personal computer – Altair
• 8086 – 5MHz – 29,000 transistors
— much more powerful
— 16 bit
— instruction cache, fetch few instructions
— 8088 (8 bit external bus) used in first IBM PC
• 80286
— 16 Mbyte memory addressable
— up from 1Mb
• 80386
— 32 bit
— Support for multitasking
• 80486
— experienced powerful cache
— built in maths co-processor
x86 Evolution (2)
• Pentium
— Multiple instructions executed in parallel
• Pentium Pro
— data flow analysis
• Pentium II
— graphics, video & audio processing
• Pentium III
— Additional floating point instructions for 3D graphics
x86 Evolution (3)
• Pentium 4
— Note Arabic rather than Roman numerals
— Further floating point and multimedia enhancements
• Core
— First x86 with dual core
• Core 2
— 64 bit architecture
• Core 2 Quad – 3GHz – 820 million transistors
— Four processors on chip
End