Modern computers
Concept of modern computer
The principle of the modern computer was
proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal 1936
paper,[41] 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 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.[42] 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
a universal Turing machine.
Stored programs
Main article: Stored-program computer
A section of the Manchester Baby, the first
electronic stored-program computer
Early computing machines had fixed programs.
Changing its function required the re-wiring and
re-structuring of the machine.[30] 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 the
stored-program computer was laid 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 the EDVAC in 1945.[20]
The Manchester Baby was the world's first stored-
program computer. It was built at the Victoria
University of Manchester by Frederic C.
Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran
its first program on 21 June 1948.[43] It was
designed as a testbed for the Williams tube, the
first random-access digital storage device.
[44]
Although the computer was considered "small
and primitive" by the standards of its time, it was
the first working machine to contain all of the
elements essential to a modern electronic
computer.[45] As soon as the Baby had
demonstrated the feasibility of its design, a project
was initiated at the university to develop it into a
more usable computer, the Manchester Mark
1. Grace Hopper was the first person to develop
a compiler for programming language.[2]
The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype
for the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first
commercially available general-purpose
computer.[46] Built by Ferranti, it 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.[47] 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. The LEO I computer became
operational in April 1951[48] and ran the world's first
regular routine office computer job.
Transistors
Main articles: Transistor and History of the
transistor
Further information: Transistor
computer and MOSFET
Bipolar junction transistor (BJT)
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.[49][50] From 1955
onwards, transistors replaced vacuum tubes in
computer designs, giving rise to 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 a mass-
production basis, which limited them to a number
of specialised applications.[51]
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.[52] Their first transistorised
computer and the first in the world,
was operational by 1953, and a second version
was completed there in April 1955. However, 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,[53] built by the electronics division
of the Atomic Energy Research
Establishment at Harwell.[53][54]
MOSFET (MOS transistor), showing gate (G), body (B),
source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated
from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect
transistor (MOSFET), also known as the MOS
transistor, was invented by Mohamed M.
Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959.[55] It
was the first truly compact transistor that could be
miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range
of uses.[51] With its high scalability,[56] and much
lower power consumption and higher density than
bipolar junction transistors,[57] the MOSFET made
it possible to build high-density integrated circuits.
[58][59]
In addition to data processing, it also enabled
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,
[60]
and became the driving force behind
the computer revolution.[61][62] The MOSFET is the
most widely used transistor in computers,[63][64] and
is the fundamental building block of digital
electronics.[65]
Integrated circuits
Main articles: Integrated circuit and Invention of
the integrated circuit
Further information: Planar
process and Microprocessor
The next great advance in computing power came
with 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.[66]
The first working ICs were invented by Jack
Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert
Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor.[67] Kilby
recorded his initial ideas concerning the
integrated circuit in July 1958, successfully
demonstrating the first working integrated
example on 12 September 1958.[68] 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". [69]
[70]
However, Kilby's invention was a hybrid
integrated circuit (hybrid IC), rather than
a monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip.[71] Kilby's
IC had external wire connections, which made it
difficult to mass-produce.[72]
Noyce also came up with his own idea of an
integrated circuit half a year later than Kilby.
[73]
Noyce's invention was the first true monolithic
IC chip.[74][72] His chip solved many practical
problems that Kilby's had not. Produced at
Fairchild Semiconductor, it was made of silicon,
whereas Kilby's chip 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 the Atalla work on
semiconductor surface passivation by silicone
dioxide in the late 1950s.[75][76][77]
Modern monolithic ICs are predominantly MOS
(metal-oxide-semiconductor) integrated circuits,
built from MOSFETs (MOS transistors).[78] The
earliest experimental MOS IC to be fabricated
was a 16-transistor chip built by Fred Heiman and
Steven Hofstein at RCA in 1962.[79] General
Microelectronics later introduced the first
commercial MOS IC in 1964,[80] developed by
Robert Norman.[79] 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 was developed
by Federico Faggin at Fairchild Semiconductor in
1968.[81] The MOSFET has since become the most
critical device component in modern ICs.[82]
The development of the MOS integrated circuit
led to the invention of the microprocessor,[83][84] 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
the exact definition of the term "microprocessor", it
is largely undisputed that the first single-chip
microprocessor was the Intel 4004,[85] designed
and realized by Federico Faggin with his silicon-
gate MOS IC technology,[83] along with Ted
Hoff, Masatoshi Shima and Stanley Mazor at Intel.
[86][87]
In the early 1970s, MOS IC technology
enabled the integration of more than 10,000
transistors on a single chip.[59]
System on a Chip (SoCs) are complete
computers on a microchip (or chip) the size of a
coin.[88] 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 all done to improve data
transfer speeds, as the data signals don't 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.
Mobile computers
The first mobile computers were heavy and ran
from mains power. The 50lb IBM 5100 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.[89] The same
developments allowed manufacturers to integrate
computing resources into cellular mobile phones
by the early 2000s.
These smartphones and tablets run on a variety
of operating systems and recently became the
dominant computing device on the market.
[90]
These are powered by System on a
Chip (SoCs), which are complete computers on a
microchip the size of a coin.[88]