How fast computers have evolved

The computer he created, an all-black cube was an important innovation. This object-oriented multitasking operating system was groundbreaking in its ability to foster rapid development of software applications. VTech, founded in Hong Kong, had been a manufacturer of Pong-like games and educational toys when they introduce the Laser computer.

The RISC microprocessor had a bit integer arithmetic and logic unit the part of the CPU that performs operations such as addition and subtraction , a bit floating-point unit, and a clock rate of 33 MHz. The chips remained similar in structure to their predecessors, the chips. What set the apart was its optimized instruction set, with an on-chip unified instruction and data cache and an optional on-chip floating-point unit. Combined with an enhanced bus interface unit, the microprocessor doubled the performance of the without increasing the clock rate.

Apple had initially included a handle in their Macintosh computers to encourage users to take their Macs on the go, though not until five years after the initial introduction does Apple introduce a true portable computer.

Sales were weaker than projected, despite being widely praised by the press for its active matrix display, removable trackball, and high performance. The line was discontinued less than two years later. It would serve as the model for several other significant multi-processor systems that would be among the fastest in the world.

Based on Charles Babbage's second design for a mechanical calculating engine, a team at the Science Museum in London sets out to prove that the design would have worked as planned.

Apple's Macintosh Portable meets with little success in the marketplace and leads to a complete redesign of Apple's line of portable computers.

All three PowerBooks introduced featured a built-in trackball, internal floppy drive, and palm rests, which would eventually become typical of s laptop design. The PowerBook was the entry-level machine, while the PowerBook was more powerful and had a larger memory.

The PowerBook was the high-end model, featuring an active matrix display, faster processor, as well as a floating point unit. The PowerBook line of computers was discontinued in Based on the Touchstone Delta computer Intel had built at Caltech, the Paragon is a parallel supercomputer that uses 2, later increased to more than four thousand Intel i processors.

More than one hundred Paragons were installed over the lifetime of the system, each costing as much as five million dollars. The Paragon at Caltech was named the fastest supercomputer in the world in Paragon systems were used in many scientific areas, including atmospheric and oceanic flow studies, and energy research.

Apple enters the handheld computer market with the Newton. The handwriting recognition software was much maligned for inaccuracy.

The Newton line never performed as well as hoped and was discontinued in The Pentium introduced several advances that made programs run faster such as the ability to execute several instructions at the same time and support for graphics and music. Using dual PowerPC CPUs, and featuring a large variety of peripheral ports, the first devices were used for software development.

While it did not sell well, the operating system, Be OS, retained a loyal following even after Be stopped producing hardware in after less than 2, machines were produced. Officially known as the Track Write, the automatically expanding full-sized keyboard used by the ThinkPad is designed by inventor John Karidis. The keyboard was comprised of three roughly triangular interlocking pieces, which formed a full-sized keyboard when the laptop was opened -- resulting in a keyboard significantly wider than the case.

Palm Inc. Sony had manufactured and sold computers in Japan, but the VAIO signals their entry into the global computer market. The first VAIO, a desktop computer, featured an additional 3D interface on top of the Windows 95 operating system as a way of attracting new users.

The VAIO line of computers would be best known for laptops were designed with communications and audio-video capabilities at the forefront, including innovative designs that incorporated TV and radio tuners, web cameras, and handwriting recognition. The line was discontinued in Until the year , it was the world's fastest supercomputer, able to achieve peak performance of 1.

The machine was noted for its ease-of-use and included a 'manual' that contained only a few pictures and less than 20 words. The camera had a maximum resolution of 0. The J-Phone line would quickly expand, releasing a flip-phone version just a month later. Cameras would become a significant part of most phones within a year, and several countries have even passed laws regulating their use.

A consortium of aerospace, energy, and marine science agencies undertook the project, and the system was built by NEC around their SX-6 architecture. To protect it from earthquakes, the building housing it was built using a seismic isolation system that used rubber supports. The Earth Simulator was listed as the fastest supercomputer in the world from to Leaving Palm Inc.

After retiring their initial Visor series of PDAs, Handspring introduced the Treo line of smartphones, designed with built-in keyboards, cameras, and the Palm operating system.

The Treo sold well, and the line continued until Handspring was purchased by Palm in With a distinctive anodized aluminum case, and hailed as the first true bit personal computer, the Apple G5 is the most powerful Macintosh ever released to that point.

While larger than the previous G4 towers, the G5 had comparatively limited space for expansion. Harkening back to the hobbyist era of personal computing in the s, Arduino begins as a project of the Interaction Design Institute, Ivrea, Italy. Each credit card-sized Arduino board consisted of an inexpensive microcontroller and signal connectors which made Arduinos ideal for use in any application connecting to or monitoring the outside world.

Nearly a quarter century after IBM launched their PC in , they had become merely another player in a crowded marketplace. Lenovo became the largest manufacturer of PCs in the world with the acquisition, later also acquiring IBM's server line of computers.

Named in honor of the space shuttle which broke-up on re-entry, the Columbia supercomputer is an important part of NASA's return to manned spaceflight after the disaster. Columbia was used in space vehicle analysis, including studying the Columbia disaster, but also in astrophysics, weather and ocean modeling. At its introduction, it was listed as the second fastest supercomputer in the world and this single system increased NASA's supercomputing capacity fold. The first offering to the public required the buyer to purchase one to be given to a child in the developing world as a condition of acquiring a machine for themselves.

By , over 2. Many companies have attempted to release electronic reading systems dating back to the early s. Online retailer Amazon released the Kindle, one of the first to gain a large following among consumers.

The first Kindle featured wireless access to content via Amazon. The first release proved so popular there was a long delay in delivering systems on release. Follow-on versions of the Kindle added further audio-video capabilities. Apple launches the iPhone - a combination of web browser, music player and cell phone - which could download new functionality in the form of "apps" applications from the online Apple store.

The touchscreen enabled smartphone also had built-in GPS navigation, high-definition camera, texting, calendar, voice dictation, and weather reports. Apple introduces their first ultra notebook — a light, thin laptop with high-capacity battery. The Air incorporated many of the technologies that had been associated with Apple's MacBook line of laptops, including integrated camera, and Wi-Fi capabilities.

To reduce its size, the traditional hard drive was replaced with a solid-state disk, the first mass-market computer to do so. The Roadrunner is the first computer to reach a sustained performance of 1 petaflop one thousand trillion floating point operations per second. It was used to model the decay of the US nuclear arsenal, analyze financial data, and render 3D medical images in real-time.

The Jaguar was used to study climate science, seismology, and astrophysics applications. It was the fastest computer in the world from November to June Since the release of the Macintosh in , Apple has placed emphasis on high-resolution graphics and display technologies.

With a screen resolution of up to pixels-per-inch PPI , Retina displays approached the limit of pixel visibility to the human eye. The display also used In Plane Switching IPS technology, which allowed for a wider viewing angle and improved color accuracy.

The machines were used by the Chinese Academy of Sciences to run massive solar energy simulations, as well as some of the most complex molecular studies ever undertaken. The iPad combines many of the popular capabilities of the iPhone, such as built-in high-definition camera, access to the iTunes Store, and audio-video capabilities, but with a nine-inch screen and without the phone.

Apps, games, and accessories helped spur the popularity of the iPad and led to its adoption in thousands of different applications from movie making, creating art, making music, inventory control and point-of-sale systems, to name but a few. Despite using 98, PowerPC chips, Sequoia's relatively low power usage made it unusually efficient. Scientific and defense applications included studies of human electrophysiology, nuclear weapon simulation, human genome mapping, and global climate change.

Conceived in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, this credit card-sized computer features ease of use and simplicity making it highly popular with students and hobbyists. In October , the one millionth Raspberry Pi was shipped. Only one month later, another one million Raspberry Pis were delivered.

The University of Michigan Micro Mote M3 is the smallest computer in the world at the time of its completion. Three types of the M3 were available — two types that measured either temperature or pressure and one that could take images.

The motes were powered by a tiny battery and could gain light energy through a photocell, which was enough to feed the infinitesimally small amount of energy a mote consumes 1 picowatt.

An ecologist, for example, could sprinkle thousands of motes from the air onto a field and measure soil and air temperature, moisture, and sunlight, giving them accurate real-time data about the environment.

Building a computer into the watch form factor has been attempted many times but the release of the Apple Watch leads to a new level of excitement. Incorporating a version of Apple's iOS operating system, as well as sensors for environmental and health monitoring, the Apple Watch was designed to be incorporated into the Apple environment with compatibility with iPhones and Mac Books.

Almost a million units were ordered on the day of release. The Watch was received with great enthusiasm, but critics took issue with the somewhat limited battery life and high price. Timeline of Computer History. By Year By Category Search. Computers Popular Culture Curt Herzstark designs Curta calculator Curta Model 1 calculator.

Harvard Mark 1 is completed Harvard Mark 1 is completed. Plans to build the Simon 1 relay logic machine are published Simon featured on the November Scientific American cover.

Minuteman I missile guidance computer developed Minuteman Guidance computer. The Atlas Computer debuts Chilton Atlas installation. Olivetti Programma is released Olivetti Programma Intel introduces the first microprocessor Advertisement for Intel's Micral is released Micral.

Wang Laboratories releases the Wang Wang Tandem Computers releases the Tandem Dual-processor Tandem 16 system. Intel and Zilog Z Zilgo Z microprocessor. Steve Wozniak completes the Apple-1 Apple-I. Motorola introduces the microprocessor Die shot of Motorola Osborne 1 introduced Osborne I.

The exponential growth rate that Moore picked up in the s was driving technological progress since the beginning of the century. It is especially insightful if one wants to understand how technological progress mattered as a driver of social change.

The extension of the time frame also makes clear how our modern computers evolved. It is an insightful way of understanding that the computer age really is the successor to the Industrial Revolution. One could also view the previous graph as a function of price instead of calculations per second; in this view you would find an exponentially decreasing price for a given product quality over years.

The implication of this rapid simultaneous improvement in quality and decrease of the product price is that, according to a detailed discussion on reddit here , a current laptop May has about the same computing power as the most powerful computer on earth in the mid s.

In the chart shown we see the price changes in goods and services in the United States from , measured as the percentage price change since Positive values indicate an increase in prices since , and negative values represent a price decline. Here we see a distinct divide between consumer durables and technologies which have typically seen a price decline , and service-based purchases which have increased in price.

Examples of service-based roles such as nursing, healthcare, childcare and education have experienced little productivity growth relative to manufacturing sectors which have seen continued improvements through technological innovation.

In order to retain employees in service-based roles, salaries have risen in order to remain competitive with industrial sectors; this increase in pay has occurred despite minimal gains in productivity. This may in part explain why the cost of education, healthcare and other services have risen faster than the general rate of inflation.

The cost to keep the machine running also matters. Electrical efficiency measures the computational capacity per unit of energy, and it is also important with respect to the environmental impact that energy production has. The progress in this respect has been tremendous: researchers found that over the last six decades the energy demand for a fixed computational load halved every 18 months.

In this chart we see the computing efficiency of various processors over time. Here, computing efficiency is measured as the number of watts a measure of electrical power needed to carry out a million instructions per second Watts per MIPS. Looking at these two picturesit becomes immediately clear how fast technological progress increased the storage capacity.

Considering the time since the introduction of the IBM in , the growth rate of storage capacity has not been as constant as for the other measures discussed before. Early on, technological revolutions boosted the capacity stepwise and not linearly. Yet for the time since , progress has been very steady and at an even higher rate than the increase of computer speed — as shown in the chart here.

Exponentially advancing technological progress can not only be found in computing machines. Cameras are a different example: for a given price consumers can buy cameras with more and more pixels.

The number of pixels has again exponentially increased, as seen in the graph here. The exponential growth rates that we have observed over the last decades seem to promise more exciting technological advances in the future. Many other types of technology have seen exponential growth rates beyond the ones discussed above.

If this growth rate should remain constant, it leads to some mind-bending opportunities. The project, funded by the English government, is a failure. More than a century later, however, the world's first computer was actually built. He establishes a company that would ultimately become IBM.

The central concept of the modern computer was based on his ideas. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State University, attempts to build the first computer without gears, cams, belts or shafts.

This marks the first time a computer is able to store information on its main memory. Considered the grandfather of digital computers, it fills a foot by foot room and has 18, vacuum tubes.

They discovered how to make an electric switch with solid materials and no need for a vacuum. Thomas Johnson Watson Jr. Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in for his work. This marks the evolution of the computer from a specialized machine for scientists and mathematicians to technology that is more accessible to the general public. Written in the C programming language, UNIX was portable across multiple platforms and became the operating system of choice among mainframes at large companies and government entities.

Due to the slow nature of the system, it never quite gained traction among home PC users.