FIFTH GENERATION COMPUTERS (Present and Beyond)

Fifth Generation computing devices, based on artificial intelligence, are still in development, though there are some applications such as voice recognition, that are being used today.

The goal of fifth generation computing is to develop devices that respond to natural language input and are capable of learning and self-organisation.

Fifth generation computers are basically an outgrowth of artificial intelligence research from the 1980's. The approach is to build a program that implements a specific algorithm to solve problems.

*These generation is still in development.

FOURTH GENERATION COMPUTERS (1971-Present)

The micro-processors brought the fourth generation of computers, as thousands of integrated circuits were built onto a single silicon chip.

This generation uses English - like commands that do not require traditional input - process - output.

As these small computers became more powerful they could be linked together to form networks, which led to the development of the Internet.

THIRD GENERATION COMPUTERS (1963-1971)

The development of  the Integrated Circuit (IC's) was the hallmark of the third generation computers. Transistors were much smaller and was placed on silicon chips, called semi-conductors, which increased the speed and efficiency of computers.

Instead of punch cards and printouts, keyboards and monitors were used with an operating system which allowed the device to run many different applications at one time.

This generation introduced data structures and control structures.

These computers are portable or machine independent where a program written from one computer can also be used by another computer, however the source code must be recompiled by a language compiler by the other computer.

SECOND GENERATION COMPUTERS (1956-1963)

Transistors replaced vacuum tubes and were used in the second generation of computers.

In second generation computers, assembly language was used which allowed programmers to specify instructions in words.

High  Level programming languages were also being developed 

at this time such as COBOL and FORTRAN.

The above images show the second generation computers.

Second generation computers used mnemonics code that consists of very short words for commands. Assembly language programs needed to be converted into machine language by an assembler before it could be run.

 

FIRST GENERATION COMPUTERS (1940-1956)

The first  generation computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic drums for memory and were often very large taking up entire rooms.

These generation used binary code that consists of strings of only zero's (0's) and one's (1's). The use of binary code is difficult to learn and use.

First generation computers relied on machine language (series of 1's and 0's), the lowest level programming language understood by computers, to perform operations, and they could only solve one problem at a time.

Input was based on punch cards and paper tapes, and output was displayed on printouts.