Chronology of Early Computing

•            (several BC): abacus used for counting

•            1614: logarithms discovered (John Napier)

•            1622: invention of the slide rule (Róbert Bissaker)

•            1642: First mechanical digital calculator (Pascal)

•            Charles Babbage (U. Cambridge) invents:

-             1812: "Difference Engine"

-             1833: "Analytical Engine"

•            1890: First electro-mechanical punched card data- processing machine (Hollerith)

•            1905: Vacuum tube/triode invented (De Forest)

The War Years...

•            1935: the relay-based IBM 601 reaches 1 MPS.

•            1939: ABC - first electronic digital computer (Atanasoff & Berry)

•            1941: Z3 - first programmable computer (Zuse)

•            Jan 1943: the Harvard Mark I (Aiken)

•            Dec 1943: Colossus built at 'Station X' - Bletchley Park

•            1945: ENIAC (Eckert & Mauchley U. Perm):

-             30 tons, 1000 square feet, 140 kW,

-             18K vacuum tubes, 20xl0-digit accumulators,

-             lOOKHz, circa 300 MPS.

-             Used to calculate artillery firing tables.

-             (1946) blinking lights for the média...

The Von Neumann Architecture Memory Arithmetic Logicaf Unit i

Control Unit -r- ,4c cumutefor

1945: von Neumann drafts "EDVAC" report

-             design for a stored-program machine

-             Eckert & Mauchley mistakenly unattributed

Further Progress...

•            1947: "point contact" transistor invented (Shockley, Bardeen & Brattain)

•            1949: EDSAC, the world's first stored-program computer (Wilkes & Wheeler)

-             3K vacuum tubes, 300 square feet, 12 kW,

-             500KHz, circa 650 IPS, 225 MPS.

-             1024 17-bit words of memory in mercury ultrasonic delay lines - early DRAM ;-)

-             31 word "operating system" (!)

•            1954: TRADIC, first electronic computer without vacuum tubes (Bell Labs)

The Silicon Age

•            1954: first silicon (junction) transistor (TI)

•            1959: first integrated circuit (Kilby & Noyce, TI)

•            1964: IBM System/360, based on ICs.

•            1971: Intel 4004, first micro-processor (Ted Hoff):

- 2300 transistors, 60 KIPS.

•            1978: Intel 8086/8088 (used in IBM PC).

•            1980: first VLSI chip (> 100,000 transistors)

•            Today: ~800M transistors, 45nm, ~3 GHz.

Languages and Levels

 

Level 5

Level 4 Level 3 Level 2

C/C++ Source

compile

L

ASM Source

assemble

ML/Java Bytecode

interpret

Other Qbject Object File Files ("Líbraries")

link

 

execute

Level 1

Executable FHe ( "Machine Code")

 

Computers programmable with variety of different languages. - e.g. ML, java, C/C++, python, peri, FORTRAN, Pascal,. .. Can describe the operation of a computer at a number of different levels; however all levels a re functionally equivalent Levels relate via either (a) translation, or (b) interpretation.