82-610: The MIPS Magnum was a line of computer workstations designed by MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. and based on the MIPS series of RISC microprocessors . The first Magnum was released in March, 1990, and production of various models continued until 1993 when SGI bought MIPS Technologies. SGI cancelled the MIPS Magnum line to promote their own workstations including the entry-level SGI Indy . The early, R3000-based Magnum series ran only RISC/os ,
164-510: A binary system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time. The Z3 was not itself a universal computer but could be extended to be Turing complete . Zuse's next computer, the Z4 , became the world's first commercial computer; after initial delay due to the Second World War, it was completed in 1950 and delivered to
246-632: A central processing unit (CPU) in the form of a microprocessor , together with some type of computer memory , typically semiconductor memory chips. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing and control unit can change the order of operations in response to stored information . Peripheral devices include input devices ( keyboards , mice , joysticks , etc.), output devices ( monitors , printers , etc.), and input/output devices that perform both functions (e.g. touchscreens ). Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source, and they enable
328-419: A keyboard , and computed and printed the results, demonstrating the feasibility of an electromechanical analytical engine. During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation . However, these were not programmable and generally lacked
410-514: A mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialized applications. At the University of Manchester , a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of valves. Their first transistorized computer and the first in the world, was operational by 1953 , and a second version was completed there in April 1955. However,
492-429: A monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip. Kilby's IC had external wire connections, which made it difficult to mass-produce. Noyce also came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year later than Kilby. Noyce's invention was the first true monolithic IC chip. His chip solved many practical problems that Kilby's had not. Produced at Fairchild Semiconductor, it was made of silicon , whereas Kilby's chip
574-634: A 1998 retrospective, it was the first working machine to contain all of the elements essential to a modern electronic computer. As soon as the Baby had demonstrated the feasibility of its design, a project began at the university to develop it into a practically useful computer, the Manchester Mark 1 . The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1 , the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer. Built by Ferranti , it
656-506: A Chip (SoCs) are complete computers on a microchip (or chip) the size of a coin. They may or may not have integrated RAM and flash memory . If not integrated, the RAM is usually placed directly above (known as Package on package ) or below (on the opposite side of the circuit board ) the SoC, and the flash memory is usually placed right next to the SoC. This is done to improve data transfer speeds, as
738-528: A MIPS R3000 processor and a custom, proprietary motherboard which incorporated the TURBOchannel bus (it is noted that DEC also manufactured the DECstation line of workstations running Ultrix , which also used MIPS processors and the TURBOchannel bus). The Magnum 3000 ran only RISC/os, which was MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.'s proprietary port of BSD Unix including some System V features. The later Magnums,
820-403: A medieval European counting house , a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money. The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer , according to Derek J. de Solla Price . It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in
902-520: A much more general design, an analytical engine , was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards , a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom . For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The engine would incorporate an arithmetic logic unit , control flow in
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#1732859238663984-524: A number of successes at breaking encrypted German military communications. The German encryption machine, Enigma , was first attacked with the help of the electro-mechanical bombes which were often run by women. To crack the more sophisticated German Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine, used for high-level Army communications, Max Newman and his colleagues commissioned Flowers to build the Colossus . He spent eleven months from early February 1943 designing and building
1066-546: A sequence of sets of values. The whole machine was to be controlled by a read-only program, which was complete with provisions for conditional branching . He also introduced the idea of floating-point arithmetic . In 1920, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the arithmometer , Torres presented in Paris the Electromechanical Arithmometer, which allowed a user to input arithmetic problems through
1148-460: A successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906. In his work Essays on Automatics published in 1914, Leonardo Torres Quevedo wrote a brief history of Babbage's efforts at constructing a mechanical Difference Engine and Analytical Engine. The paper contains a design of a machine capable to calculate formulas like a x ( y − z ) 2 {\displaystyle a^{x}(y-z)^{2}} , for
1230-402: A universal Turing machine. Early computing machines had fixed programs. Changing its function required the re-wiring and re-structuring of the machine. With the proposal of the stored-program computer this changed. A stored-program computer includes by design an instruction set and can store in memory a set of instructions (a program ) that details the computation . The theoretical basis for
1312-572: A variant of BSD Unix , but the subsequent Magnum workstations based on the Jazz architecture ran both RISC/os and Windows NT . In addition to these proprietary operating systems, both Linux and NetBSD have been ported to the Jazz-based MIPS Magnum machines. Some models of MIPS Magnum were rebadged and sold by Groupe Bull and Olivetti . In addition, headless (i.e., without a framebuffer or video card) versions were marketed as servers under
1394-577: A wide range of tasks. The term computer system may refer to a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware , operating system , software , and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation; or to a group of computers that are linked and function together, such as a computer network or computer cluster . A broad range of industrial and consumer products use computers as control systems , including simple special-purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls , and factory devices like industrial robots . Computers are at
1476-558: Is capable of pixel screen resolutions of 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or 1280x1024. Because it is a simple framebuffer, the G364 does not include any accelerated graphics functions. The MIPS Magnum R4000 also includes two standard RS-232 -capable serial ports and an IBM AT -compatible parallel port . Also, the MIPS Magnum R4000 had an IBM AT-compatible floppy disk controller and a single floppy drive bay. The MIPS Magnum 3000 used
1558-463: Is the stored program , where all the instructions for computing are stored in memory. Von Neumann acknowledged that the central concept of the modern computer was due to this paper. Turing machines are to this day a central object of study in theory of computation . Except for the limitations imposed by their finite memory stores, modern computers are said to be Turing-complete , which is to say, they have algorithm execution capability equivalent to
1640-603: The Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera , between Kythera and Crete , and has been dated to approximately c. 100 BCE . Devices of comparable complexity to the Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until the fourteenth century. Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī in
1722-504: The E6B circular slide rule used for time and distance calculations on light aircraft. In the 1770s, Pierre Jaquet-Droz , a Swiss watchmaker , built a mechanical doll ( automaton ) that could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order of its internal wheels different letters, and hence different messages, could be produced. In effect, it could be mechanically "programmed" to read instructions. Along with two other complex machines,
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#17328592386631804-623: The ETH Zurich . The computer was manufactured by Zuse's own company, Zuse KG , which was founded in 1941 as the first company with the sole purpose of developing computers in Berlin. The Z4 served as the inspiration for the construction of the ERMETH , the first Swiss computer and one of the first in Europe. Purely electronic circuit elements soon replaced their mechanical and electromechanical equivalents, at
1886-489: The microcomputer revolution in the 1970s. The speed, power, and versatility of computers have been increasing dramatically ever since then, with transistor counts increasing at a rapid pace ( Moore's law noted that counts doubled every two years), leading to the Digital Revolution during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element , typically
1968-533: The "-M" parameter ("-M magnum" or "-M pica61"). QEMU can run the MIPS-compiled version of Debian Linux on an x86 platform, along with Windows NT 3.5, 3.51 & 4.0. Computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation ). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs . These programs enable computers to perform
2050-504: The "second generation" of computers. Compared to vacuum tubes, transistors have many advantages: they are smaller, and require less power than vacuum tubes, so give off less heat. Junction transistors were much more reliable than vacuum tubes and had longer, indefinite, service life. Transistorized computers could contain tens of thousands of binary logic circuits in a relatively compact space. However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on
2132-513: The 1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers. In the 1890s, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo began to develop a series of advanced analog machines that could solve real and complex roots of polynomials , which were published in 1901 by the Paris Academy of Sciences . Charles Babbage , an English mechanical engineer and polymath , originated
2214-612: The Cambridge EDSAC of 1949, became operational in April 1951 and ran the world's first routine office computer job . The concept of a field-effect transistor was proposed by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in 1925. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain , while working under William Shockley at Bell Labs , built the first working transistor , the point-contact transistor , in 1947, which was followed by Shockley's bipolar junction transistor in 1948. From 1955 onwards, transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computer designs, giving rise to
2296-577: The EDVAC in 1945. The Manchester Baby was the world's first stored-program computer . It was built at the University of Manchester in England by Frederic C. Williams , Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill , and ran its first program on 21 June 1948. It was designed as a testbed for the Williams tube , the first random-access digital storage device. Although the computer was described as "small and primitive" by
2378-451: The ENIAC were six women, often known collectively as the "ENIAC girls". It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and square root. High speed memory was limited to 20 words (about 80 bytes). Built under
2460-492: The MIPS Magnum R4000 requires use of the big-endian MIPS Monitor firmware . The MIPS Magnum can run NetBSD , and it also ran OpenBSD at one point, but lack of developer interest and proper resources lead to the termination of the arch's support prior to the December 1, 1998 2.4 release. For the earlier, RISC/os-only MIPS Magnum 3000 machines, the correct port is NetBSD/mipsco. For the later, Windows NT-capable MIPS Magnum R4000,
2542-462: The MIPS Magnum R4000 was intended to be MIPS' entry into the Windows NT workstation market. However, because MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.'s in-house effort to design a MIPS-based Windows NT system had met delays, MIPS Technologies abandoned its in-house efforts and instead licensed the Jazz design which Microsoft had developed in the early 1990s to facilitate the porting and development of Windows NT (it
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2624-784: The MIPS Magnum R4000PC and MIPS Magnum R4000SC, also used a MIPS microprocessor — the MIPS R4000, a full 64-bit microprocessor available either in a low-cost version (the R4000PC) having 16 kB of L1 cache but no L2 cache, or a higher-performance version (the R4000SC) with 1 MB of secondary cache in addition to the 16 kB of primary cache. As MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. had co-founded the Advanced Computing Environment consortium with Silicon Graphics , Microsoft , Motorola and others,
2706-524: The MOS transistor, was invented at Bell Labs between 1955 and 1960 and was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturized and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. With its high scalability , and much lower power consumption and higher density than bipolar junction transistors, the MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuits . In addition to data processing, it also enabled
2788-450: The Scottish scientist Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location. The differential analyser , a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration , used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform
2870-488: The U.S. Although the ENIAC was similar to the Colossus, it was much faster, more flexible, and it was Turing-complete. Like the Colossus, a "program" on the ENIAC was defined by the states of its patch cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that came later. Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches. The programmers of
2952-578: The US, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed and tested the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) in 1942, the first "automatic electronic digital computer". This design was also all-electronic and used about 300 vacuum tubes, with capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating drum for memory. During World War II, the British code-breakers at Bletchley Park achieved
3034-859: The advent of the integrated circuit (IC). The idea of the integrated circuit was first conceived by a radar scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment of the Ministry of Defence , Geoffrey W.A. Dummer . Dummer presented the first public description of an integrated circuit at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D.C. , on 7 May 1952. The first working ICs were invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor . Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning
3116-630: The basic concept which underlies all electronic digital computers. By 1938, the United States Navy had developed an electromechanical analog computer small enough to use aboard a submarine . This was the Torpedo Data Computer , which used trigonometry to solve the problem of firing a torpedo at a moving target. During World War II similar devices were developed in other countries as well. Early digital computers were electromechanical ; electric switches drove mechanical relays to perform
3198-530: The best Arithmetician that euer [ sic ] breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number." This usage of the term referred to a human computer , a person who carried out calculations or computations . The word continued to have the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century. During the latter part of this period, women were often hired as computers because they could be paid less than their male counterparts. By 1943, most human computers were women. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives
3280-563: The calculation. These devices had a low operating speed and were eventually superseded by much faster all-electric computers, originally using vacuum tubes . The Z2 , created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1939 in Berlin , was one of the earliest examples of an electromechanical relay computer. In 1941, Zuse followed his earlier machine up with the Z3 , the world's first working electromechanical programmable , fully automatic digital computer. The Z3
3362-612: The commercial UNIX workstations of the era — for example, the Magnum R4000 included an EISA bus, used IBM PS/2 -compatible keyboards and mice, and used commodity chipset components whose control registers were mapped to memory locations set forth in the IBM AT standard. The MIPS Magnum R4000 ran either Windows NT (beginning with version 3.1) when equipped with the little-endian ARC firmware , or RISC/os when MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.'s proprietary big-endian firmware (the "MIPS Monitor")
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3444-554: The concept of a programmable computer. Considered the " father of the computer ", he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century. After working on his difference engine he announced his invention in 1822, in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society , titled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables". He also designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that
3526-690: The core of general-purpose devices such as personal computers and mobile devices such as smartphones . Computers power the Internet , which links billions of computers and users. Early computers were meant to be used only for calculations. Simple manual instruments like the abacus have aided people in doing calculations since ancient times. Early in the Industrial Revolution , some mechanical devices were built to automate long, tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms . More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in
3608-576: The correct port is NetBSD/arc. The MIPS Magnum R4000 was among the earliest supported machines in the effort to port the Linux kernel to MIPS, with initial support begun April, 1995. Support for the Magnum R4000 became stable in the 2.1 development tree (around 1999); however, support for the Magnum in Linux has atrophied since then. The QEMU PC emulator version 0.9.1 can emulate the MIPS Magnum (and Acer Pica 61) using
3690-493: The data signals do not have to travel long distances. Since ENIAC in 1945, computers have advanced enormously, with modern SoCs (such as the Snapdragon 865) being the size of a coin while also being hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC, integrating billions of transistors, and consuming only a few watts of power. The first mobile computers were heavy and ran from mains power. The 50 lb (23 kg) IBM 5100
3772-507: The decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage , completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill ) in 1888. He gave
3854-454: The direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC's development and construction lasted from 1943 to full operation at the end of 1945. The machine was huge, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors. The principle of
3936-479: The doll is at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel , Switzerland , and still operates. In 1831–1835, mathematician and engineer Giovanni Plana devised a Perpetual Calendar machine , which through a system of pulleys and cylinders could predict the perpetual calendar for every year from 0 CE (that is, 1 BCE) to 4000 CE, keeping track of leap years and varying day length. The tide-predicting machine invented by
4018-475: The early 11th century. The astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd centuries BCE and is often attributed to Hipparchus . A combination of the planisphere and dioptra , the astrolabe was effectively an analog computer capable of working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy . An astrolabe incorporating a mechanical calendar computer and gear -wheels
4100-430: The early 2000s. These smartphones and tablets run on a variety of operating systems and recently became the dominant computing device on the market. These are powered by System on a Chip (SoCs), which are complete computers on a microchip the size of a coin. Computers can be classified in a number of different ways, including: Advanced Computing Environment Too Many Requests If you report this error to
4182-399: The early 20th century. The first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II , both electromechanical and using thermionic valves . The first semiconductor transistors in the late 1940s were followed by the silicon -based MOSFET (MOS transistor) and monolithic integrated circuit chip technologies in the late 1950s, leading to the microprocessor and
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#17328592386634264-473: The exact definition of the term "microprocessor", it is largely undisputed that the first single-chip microprocessor was the Intel 4004 , designed and realized by Federico Faggin with his silicon-gate MOS IC technology, along with Ted Hoff , Masatoshi Shima and Stanley Mazor at Intel . In the early 1970s, MOS IC technology enabled the integration of more than 10,000 transistors on a single chip. System on
4346-452: The first Colossus. After a functional test in December 1943, Colossus was shipped to Bletchley Park, where it was delivered on 18 January 1944 and attacked its first message on 5 February. Colossus was the world's first electronic digital programmable computer. It used a large number of valves (vacuum tubes). It had paper-tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on its data, but it
4428-725: The first attested use of computer in the 1640s, meaning 'one who calculates'; this is an "agent noun from compute (v.)". The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean " 'calculating machine' (of any type) is from 1897." The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the "modern use" of the term, to mean 'programmable digital electronic computer' dates from "1945 under this name; [in a] theoretical [sense] from 1937, as Turing machine ". The name has remained, although modern computers are capable of many higher-level functions. Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one correspondence with fingers . The earliest counting device
4510-409: The form of conditional branching and loops , and integrated memory , making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete . The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with
4592-462: The integrated circuit in July 1958, successfully demonstrating the first working integrated example on 12 September 1958. In his patent application of 6 February 1959, Kilby described his new device as "a body of semiconductor material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are completely integrated". However, Kilby's invention was a hybrid integrated circuit (hybrid IC), rather than
4674-411: The integration. In 1876, Sir William Thomson had already discussed the possible construction of such calculators, but he had been stymied by the limited output torque of the ball-and-disk integrators . In a differential analyzer, the output of one integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a graphing output. The torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work. Starting in
4756-569: The machine did make use of valves to generate its 125 kHz clock waveforms and in the circuitry to read and write on its magnetic drum memory , so it was not the first completely transistorized computer. That distinction goes to the Harwell CADET of 1955, built by the electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell . The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistor (MOSFET), also known as
4838-452: The modern computer was proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal 1936 paper, On Computable Numbers . Turing proposed a simple device that he called "Universal Computing machine" and that is now known as a universal Turing machine . He proved that such a machine is capable of computing anything that is computable by executing instructions (program) stored on tape, allowing the machine to be programmable. The fundamental concept of Turing's design
4920-403: The more famous Sir William Thomson. The art of mechanical analog computing reached its zenith with the differential analyzer , built by H. L. Hazen and Vannevar Bush at MIT starting in 1927. This built on the mechanical integrators of James Thomson and the torque amplifiers invented by H. W. Nieman. A dozen of these devices were built before their obsolescence became obvious. By the 1950s,
5002-528: The name "MIPS Millennium". Model number information . The MIPS Magnum 3000 has a 25 or 33 MHz MIPS R3000A microprocessor. The MIPS Magnum R4000 PC-50 has a MIPS R4000 PC processor with only 16 kB L1 cache (but no L2 cache), running at an external clock rate of 50 MHz (which was internally doubled in the microprocessor to 100 MHz). The MIPS Magnum R4000 SC-50 is identical to the Magnum R4000PC, but includes one megabyte of secondary cache in addition to
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#17328592386635084-486: The practical use of MOS transistors as memory cell storage elements, leading to the development of MOS semiconductor memory , which replaced earlier magnetic-core memory in computers. The MOSFET led to the microcomputer revolution , and became the driving force behind the computer revolution . The MOSFET is the most widely used transistor in computers, and is the fundamental building block of digital electronics . The next great advance in computing power came with
5166-581: The primary cache. For main memory , the MIPS Magnum 3000 accepted 30-pin true-parity , 80ns SIMMs up to a maximum of 128 MB. The MIPS Magnum R4000 accepted eight 72-pin true-parity SIMMs, up to a maximum of 256 MB. The MIPS Magnum R4000 (both the R4000 PC-50 and R4000 SC-50) includes a single on-board SCSI bus using the on-board NCR 53c94 fast-narrow SCSI chipset. An internal cable with four 50-pin connections links internal SCSI devices, and also interfaces external SCSI devices via an endlink mounted on
5248-453: The rear of the case. The MIPS Magnum R4000 includes an on-board SONIC Ethernet chipset and an AUI Ethernet connector mounted on the case. The video output for the Magnum R4000 consists of a proprietary framebuffer available as a custom full-length option card — the G364 framebuffer . The G364 includes a SUN 13W3 -style output (which can be converted to the more common VGA pin-out), and
5330-448: The release of Windows NT version 4.0, and useful software for Windows/MIPS — either from Microsoft or third-party vendors — was very scarce even when MIPS was supported (for example, Microsoft never ported its own Microsoft Office suite to MIPS). The MIPS Magnum 3000, unlike the MIPS Magnum R4000, was not able to run Windows NT. All Magnums could run RISC/os, MIPS Computer System, Inc.'s proprietary port of BSD UNIX. Running RISC/os on
5412-532: The results of operations to be saved and retrieved. It was not until the mid-20th century that the word acquired its modern definition; according to the Oxford English Dictionary , the first known use of the word computer was in a different sense, in a 1613 book called The Yong Mans Gleanings by the English writer Richard Brathwait : "I haue [ sic ] read the truest computer of Times, and
5494-575: The same time that digital calculation replaced analog. The engineer Tommy Flowers , working at the Post Office Research Station in London in the 1930s, began to explore the possible use of electronics for the telephone exchange . Experimental equipment that he built in 1934 went into operation five years later, converting a portion of the telephone exchange network into an electronic data processing system, using thousands of vacuum tubes . In
5576-478: The stored-program computer was laid out by Alan Turing in his 1936 paper. In 1945, Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory and began work on developing an electronic stored-program digital computer. His 1945 report "Proposed Electronic Calculator" was the first specification for such a device. John von Neumann at the University of Pennsylvania also circulated his First Draft of a Report on
5658-443: The success of digital electronic computers had spelled the end for most analog computing machines, but analog computers remained in use during the 1950s in some specialized applications such as education ( slide rule ) and aircraft ( control systems ). Claude Shannon 's 1937 master's thesis laid the foundations of digital computing, with his insight of applying Boolean algebra to the analysis and synthesis of switching circuits being
5740-412: The versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers. The first modern analog computer was a tide-predicting machine , invented by Sir William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin) in 1872. The differential analyser , a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration using wheel-and-disc mechanisms, was conceptualized in 1876 by James Thomson , the elder brother of
5822-406: Was a 16-transistor chip built by Fred Heiman and Steven Hofstein at RCA in 1962. General Microelectronics later introduced the first commercial MOS IC in 1964, developed by Robert Norman. Following the development of the self-aligned gate (silicon-gate) MOS transistor by Robert Kerwin, Donald Klein and John Sarace at Bell Labs in 1967, the first silicon-gate MOS IC with self-aligned gates
5904-614: Was an early example. Later portables such as the Osborne 1 and Compaq Portable were considerably lighter but still needed to be plugged in. The first laptops, such as the Grid Compass , removed this requirement by incorporating batteries – and with the continued miniaturization of computing resources and advancements in portable battery life, portable computers grew in popularity in the 2000s. The same developments allowed manufacturers to integrate computing resources into cellular mobile phones by
5986-530: Was built with 2000 relays , implementing a 22 bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz . Program code was supplied on punched film while data could be stored in 64 words of memory or supplied from the keyboard. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering numerous advances such as floating-point numbers . Rather than the harder-to-implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage 's earlier design), using
6068-501: Was delivered to the University of Manchester in February 1951. At least seven of these later machines were delivered between 1953 and 1957, one of them to Shell labs in Amsterdam . In October 1947 the directors of British catering company J. Lyons & Company decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers. Lyons's LEO I computer, modelled closely on
6150-443: Was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968. The MOSFET has since become the most critical device component in modern ICs. The development of the MOS integrated circuit led to the invention of the microprocessor , and heralded an explosion in the commercial and personal use of computers. While the subject of exactly which device was the first microprocessor is contentious, partly due to lack of agreement on
6232-825: Was developed in the late 16th century and found application in gunnery, surveying and navigation. The planimeter was a manual instrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by tracing over it with a mechanical linkage. The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630, by the English clergyman William Oughtred , shortly after the publication of the concept of the logarithm . It is a hand-operated analog computer for doing multiplication and division. As slide rule development progressed, added scales provided reciprocals, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as logarithms and exponentials, circular and hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions . Slide rules with special scales are still used for quick performance of routine calculations, such as
6314-617: Was first developed on the Intel i860 architecture and then on the MIPS architecture , both using Microsoft's own prototype hardware and was designed from the start to be easily ported to other system architectures, such as the Intel 386 , Alpha , and PowerPC ). As such, the MIPS Magnum R4000 (and indeed all Jazz-based systems, such as the Acer PICA , NEC RISCstation , Olivetti M700, etc.) incorporated many features more common to Intel-based PC's than to
6396-414: Was installed. The firmware could be switched between ARC or MIPS Monitor by loading either one into the Magnum's flash memory / NVRAM from floppy disk, and thus the Magnum R4000 could dual-boot between Windows or Unix. The MIPS Magnum R4000 was supported by Windows NT from version 3.1 (released in 1993) through version 4.0 (released in 1996). However, support by Microsoft for all MIPS systems ended after
6478-449: Was invented by Abi Bakr of Isfahan , Persia in 1235. Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī invented the first mechanical geared lunisolar calendar astrolabe, an early fixed- wired knowledge processing machine with a gear train and gear-wheels, c. 1000 AD . The sector , a calculating instrument used for solving problems in proportion, trigonometry , multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares and cube roots,
6560-477: Was made of germanium . Noyce's monolithic IC was fabricated using the planar process , developed by his colleague Jean Hoerni in early 1959. In turn, the planar process was based on Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick work on semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide. Modern monolithic ICs are predominantly MOS ( metal–oxide–semiconductor ) integrated circuits, built from MOSFETs (MOS transistors). The earliest experimental MOS IC to be fabricated
6642-630: Was most likely a form of tally stick . Later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items, likely livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers. The use of counting rods is one example. The abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from devices used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BCE. Since then, many other forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In
6724-434: Was not Turing-complete. Nine Mk II Colossi were built (The Mk I was converted to a Mk II making ten machines in total). Colossus Mark I contained 1,500 thermionic valves (tubes), but Mark II with 2,400 valves, was both five times faster and simpler to operate than Mark I, greatly speeding the decoding process. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic programmable computer built in
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