Fourth Generation of Computers
The fourth generation of computers began around 1975 and lasted until around 1985. It recognizes that period of computer history when the integrated circuit chip evolved in to the microprocessor, a "computer on a chip." As a result, the first functional desktop computers came in to being, beginning with the hobbyist do-it-yourself experimental models, such as the Altair 8800 mail-order kit, and progressing to the early commercial models such as the Commodore and the Tandy TRS-80. The period marks the successful introduction and mass production of the early desktop models of the IBM PC, its several clones, and the Apple Macintosh.
A star of the earlier generation of computers had been the 1960s Control Information CD 1604 computer. In order to method information it had some 25,000 transistors & 100,000 diodes among thousands of resistors & capacitors, all individually wired together.
The microprocessor was in route to do all the things the CD 1604 did on chip. It had its birth when researchers at Intel integrated all the processing functions of arithmetic, logic, & control together onto chip through a method of photolithography.
The CPU read the information & directions that came in as bytes of 8-bit code. The reading involved performing arithmetic & logic calculations on the code. The resulting information & directions further allowed control functions to order the code in to various streams of information that were written or received as graphics output on a monitor.
Kilby received the Nobel Prize for the IC chip while Noyce continued its development as founder of the Intel Corporation. Meanwhile, the solid state miniaturization of electronic parts immediately pushed expertise in to new bounds of advances in space, defense & consumer projects. By the 1970s, large-scale integration (LSI) of tens of thousands of transistors on chip would finally lead to very-large-scale integration (VLSI) with millions &, then, billions of transistors per chip after the turn of the century.
Under Noyce, Intel released the first CPU-status microprocessor, the 4004, November 15, 1971. The company also developed the first random access memory chip, the RAM chip, to provide temporary storage for the CPU. The 4004 could method 60,000 (60K) instructions per second. It was not until Intel produced the 8-bit 8080 microprocessor, April 1974, that the desktop revolution began to bloom.
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