2018/2019 session 1th term

CLASSIFICATION OF COMPUTER BY GENERATIIONS :

1. FIRST GENERATION COMPUTERS (1945-1955) TECHNOLOGY: vacuum tubes or valves
CHARACTERISTICS:
 The use vacuum tube technology
 They are huge in size
 The generate a lot of heat
 They were slow and often unreliable
 They had limited internal storage capacity
 Input and output modes are punched cards and printouts
 They are very expensive

3. SECOND GENERATION COMPUTERS (1956-1963) Technology: Transistors

Characteristics:
 They used transistor technology
 They generate lesser amount of heat
 They are smaller than first generation computer
 Instructions are coded in assembly language
 Instructions are written in high level language
 They were less expensive to buy
 The consume lesser power
 They had limited external storage
 They used magnetic tapes and disk as storage devices

5. THIRD GENERATION COMPUTERS (1964 - 1971) Technology : Integrated circuit (IC)

Characteristics:
 They use integrated circuit technology
 They generate lesser amount of heat
 The are smaller in size than earlier generations
 The input and output modes are keyboard and monitor
 They are faster and more reliable
  The consume lesser power
 They are cheaper to buy

7. FOURTH GENERATION COMPUTER (1990 TO DATE) Technology: Microprocessors

Characteristics:
 They use microchip/microprocessor technology
 The generate lesser amount of heat
 They are smaller in size
 Instructions are coded in high level languages
 They have graphic user interface
 They come in various sizes
 They are faster
 they are more reliable
 They also cheaper to buy

9. FIFTH GENERATION COMPUTER (21ST CENTURY AND BEYOND) Technology: Artificial intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence(AI) is the term used to link human behavior and characteristics in man-made
machines.

Characteristics:
 They will have artificial intelligence
 They will have very high speed
 They can perform multitasking
 They can emulate human behaviors

Type of Computer
Analog Computers
Analog computers are used to process analog data. Analog data is of continuous nature and
which is not discrete or separate. Such type of data includes temperature, pressure, speed
weight, voltage, depth etc. These quantities are continuous and having an infinite variety of
values.
It measures continuous changes in some physical quantity e.g. The Speedometer of a car
measures speed, the change of temperature is measured by a Thermometer, the weight is
measured by Weights machine. These computers are ideal in situations where data can be
accepted directly from measuring instrument without having to convert it into numbers or
codes.
Digital Computers
A Digital Computer, as its name implies, works with digits to represent numerals, letters or
other special symbols. Digital Computers operate on inputs which are ON-OFF type and its
output is also in the form of ON-OFF signal. Normally, an ON is represented by a 1 and an OFF is
represented by a 0. So we can say that digital computers process information which is based on
the presence or the absence of an electrical charge or we prefer to say a binary 1 or 0.
A digital computer can be used to process numeric as well as non-numeric data. It can perform
arithmetic operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and also logical
operations. Most of the computers available today are digital computers. The most common
examples of digital computers are accounting machines and calculators.
The results of digital computers are more accurate than the results of analog computers.
Analog computers are faster than digital. Analog computers lack memory whereas digital
computers store information. We can say that digital computers count and analog computers
measures.

Hybrid Computers
A hybrid is a combination of digital and analog computers. It combines the best features of both
types of computers, i-e. It has the speed of analog computer and the memory and accuracy of
digital computer. Hybrid computers are used mainly in specialized applications where both
kinds of data need to be processed. Therefore, they help the user, to process both continuous
and discrete data. For example a petrol pump contains a processor that converts fuel flow
measurements into quantity and price values. In hospital Intensive Care Unit (ICU), an analog
device is used which measures patient's blood pressure and temperature etc, which are then
converted and displayed in the form of digits. Hybrid computers for example are used for
scientific calculations, in defense and radar systems.
CLASSIFICATION OF COMPUTERS: BY SIZES AND DEGREE OF VERSATILITY

Computer classification according to the size and capacity are grouped into four (4) categories. These
are: micro computers, mini computers, mainframe and super computers. MICRO COMPUTERS: this is
the smallest and most popular class of computers. Micro computers are also called personal computers
(PC) or desktop computers. They are the most widely used and the fastest growing type of computers.
They are accessible, relatively cheap and interactive. It is an example of general purpose computers.
CLASSES OR SIZE OF MICRO COMPUTERS

Micro computers came in different sizes ranging from desktop, laptop, palmtop, notebook computers
etc. DESKTOP: This category of micro computer can be set on the top of a desk “desktop”. It supports
other peripherals and has a very high storage capacity and speed.
LAPTOP COMPUTER : This type of computer can be placed on the lap and also in a belief case. They can
be either AC powered, battery powered or both. They combine the power of the PC with mobility.
NOTEBOOKCOMPUTERS: These are very high pcs but have all the capacities of a PC. Palm top: they are
small enough to be held in the palm of your hand: they are equally as powerful as the desktop.
WORK STATIONS: These are more powerful than the pcs. They are used by the engineers and scientists
who process a lot of data. It is a kind of special purpose computer.
MINICOMPUTER This is a medium size general purpose digital
MINICOMPUTER This is a medium size general purpose digital. It is a multi-user i.e. It allows many users
at once and has the ability to perform many tasks simultaneously. The distinguished features of mini
from micro computers are: memory size, speed of operation, faster input and output devices and higher
cost. They are specially designed to solve and handle wide variety of commuting problems. It has
become a popular and powerful network server to help manage large internet web sites, corporate
intranet and client server networks. MAINFRAME COMPUTER These are multi-user and multi-tasking
general purpose computers. They have large storage capacity and cost more than typical mini
computers. They are used by large organizations such as banks, universities, central bank, national
population commission etc.
SUPER COMPUTER: this can be seen as technological improvement on mainframe computers. It is used
in the scientific environment such as for space studies and weather forecast. They have higher
processing powers and large storage capacities Classify computers by size and degree of versatility.

COMPONENT OF COMPUTER SYSTEM

A computer system consists of three main parts otherwise called components. These are:
1. Hardware. 2. Software. 3. Human ware.
Hard ware component: computer hardware could be defined as the physical parts of the
computer that we can see, feel and handle computer hardwire includes the main parts and
its peripheral. The main parts are the two devices: processor and memory unit make up the
central processing unit. The CPU is responsible for all the processing responsible for feeding
data into the system and collecting information from the system CPU is the brain of the
computer system and sub-divided into the control unit (CU), arithmetic and logic unit (ALU)
and storage of memory unit.

Software components : system have no physical presence, they are stored in digital form
within computer memory. There are different categories of software, including system
software, utilities and applications software. Software can also be described as being either
generic or bespoke.
Human ware: is defined in IT as hardware or software that is built around user capabilities
and user needs. This often involves creating a particular visual or physical interface for a
given set of users. The design and engineering of human ware starts with the user's
interests and needs first, and designs the infrastructure accordingly.

DEFINATION OF SOFTWARE ?
Computer software, or simply software, is a generic term that refers to a collection
of data or computer instructions that tell the computer how to work, in contrast to
the physical hardware from which the system is built, that actually performs the work.
 Types of Computer Software
System Software
System software coordinates the complete system hardware and provides an environment or
platform for all the other types of software to work in. It is the most basic type of software in
any computer system, which is essential for other programs, applications and indeed for the
whole computer system to function.
(System software examples - Microsoft Windows XP, Mac OS, Linux, Windows Vista, Ubuntu,
device drivers, etc.)
Application Software
Application software are those that help the user perform the tasks of his/her choice. They are
non-essential software which are installed and run depending upon the requirements, in the
environment provided by the system software.
(Application software examples - MS Office, OpenOffice, Media Players, MS Access, educational
software, media development software, Antivirus software, etc. )
Programming Software
Programming software are used to write, test, debug and develop other software programs and
applications. The various programming language editors such as Eclipse- a Java language editor,
come under this category. They are used for creating both the system as well as application
software.
(Programming software examples - Turbo C, Xilinx, Kiel, compilers, debuggers, Integrated
Development Environment (IDE), etc.)
WHAT IS OPERATING SYSTEM ?
An operating system (OS), in its most general sense, is software that allows a user to run other
applications on a computing device. While it is possible for a software application to interface
directly with hardware, the vast majority of applications are written for an OS, which allows
them to take advantage of common libraries and not worry about specific hardware details.
The operating system manages a computer's hardware resources, including:
 Input devices such as a keyboard and mouse
 Output devices such as display monitors, printers and scanners
 Network devices such as modems, routers and network connections
 Storage devices such as internal and external drives
The OS also provides services to facilitate the efficient execution and management of, and
memory allocations for, any additional installed software application programs.
Examples of Operating Systems

Laptops, tablets, and desktop computers all run operating systems that you've probably heard
of. Some examples include versions of Microsoft Windows (like Windows 10, Windows

8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP), Apple's macOS (formerly OS X), iOS, Chrome
OS, BlackBerry Tablet OS, and flavors of the open source operating system Linux.
e.g

 Microsoft Windows
 GNU/Linux based stuff
o Debian
o Ubuntu
o Arch
o Others

 Apple OSX (BSD based)

 Android
 iOS
 Nintendo Switch System Software

Number Systems — Decimal, Binary, Octal and Hexadecimal :

In mathematics, a “base” or a “radix” is the number of different digits or combination
of digits and letters that a system of counting uses to represent numbers.

For example,

 Base 10 (Decimal) — Represent any number using 10 digits [0–9]

 Base 2 (Binary) — Represent any number using 2 digits [0–1]
 Base 8 (Octal) — Represent any number using 8 digits [0–7]
 Base 16(Hexadecimal) — Represent any number using 10 digits and 6
characters [0–9, A, B, C, D, E, F]

So how do we build a number system?

We all know how to write numbers up to 9, don’t we? What then? Well, it’s simple really.
When you have used up all of your symbols, what you do is,

 you add another digit to the left and make the right digit 0.

 Then again go up to until you finish up all your symbols on the right side and when
you hit the last symbol increase the digit on the left by 1.

 When you used up all the symbols on both the right and left digit, then make both of
them 0 and add another 1 to the left and it goes on and on like that. If you use the
above 3 rules on a decimal system,
 Write numbers 0–9.

 Once you reach 9, make rightmost digit 0 and add 1 to the left which means 10.

 Then on right digit, we go up until 9 and when we reach 19 we use 0 on the right digit
and add 1 to the left, so we get 20.

 Likewise, when we reach 99, we use 0s in both of these digits’ places and add 1 to the
left which gives us 100.

So you see when we have ten different symbols, when we add digits to the left side of a
number, each position is going to worth 10 times more than it’s previous one.

How to read numbers?

Let’s take the same decimal number system. There are only two rules actually.

 You have a symbol to represent a quantity [0–9]

 Then the meaning of a digit based on its position — let’s get this clarified a bit.

Let’s take one digit number ‘8’. This simply means 8, in other words, it is exactly what it says it
represents. What about 24? In case of two digits, right digit says what it means, but left digit
means ten times what it says. That is, 4 is 4, 2 is 20. Altogether forms 24.

If we take a three digit number, rightmost digit means what it says, the middle one is ten times
what it says, leftmost digit 100 times what it says. Simply if we take number 546, it means 6 +
(10 * 4) + (5 * 100) = 546.
Binary
With binary, we have only two digits to represent a number, 0 and 1 and we are already out of
symbols. So what do we do? Let’s apply the same rules that we used on the decimal system.

We make the right digit 0 and add 1 to left, that is, our next number is ‘10’. Then we go up
until we used up all our symbols on the right side.So the next number in line is 11.

After ‘11’, we put 0s in both these places and add 1 to the left and we get 100.

Then 101, 110, 111 then 1000 …

This binary number system is based on two digits and each position is worth two times more
than the previous position.
Reading a binary number is almost same as reading a decimal. Right digit says what it means,
next one means two times the previous one, after that 4 times etc…

So 101 means 5 in decimal.

These same rules apply to octal and hexadecimal number systems as well. With octal, we have
only 8 digits to represent numbers so once we get to 7 the next number is 10 and in
hexadecimal, we have 10 digits and 6 letters to represent numbers. In that case, when we reach
9 next number is represented in the letter ‘A’. Next one ‘B’. Likewise, we go up to letter ‘F’ and
after ‘F’ comes ‘10’.

I’ll just list down few numbers in these 4 different number systems and see whether you can
apply the rules that we discussed above to get the next number.

UNIT OF STORAGE IN COMPUTER SYSTEM

Bit
The smallest unit of data in a computer is called Bit (Binary Digit). A bit has a single
binary value, either 0 or 1. In most computer systems, there are eight bits in a byte. The
value of a bit is usually stored as either above or below a designated level of electrical
charge in a single capacitor within a memory device.

Nibble

Half a byte (four bits) is called a nibble.

Byte

In most computer systems, a byte is a unit of data that is eight binary digits long. A byte
is a unit most computers use to represent a character such as a letter, number or
typographic symbol (for example, “g”, “5”, or “?”). A byte can also hold a string of bits
that need to be used in some larger unit of application purposes (for example, the
stream of bits that constitute a visual image for a program that displays images or the
string of bits that constitutes the machine code of a computer program).

In some computer systems, four bytes constitute a word, a unit that a computer
processor can be designed to handle efficiently as it reads and processes each
instruction. Some computer processors can handle two-byte or single-byte instructions.

A byte is abbreviated with a “B”. (A bit is abbreviated with a small “b”). Computer
storage is usually measured in byte multiples. For example, an 820 MB hard drive holds
a nominal 820 million bytes – or megabytes – of data. Byte multiples are based on
powers of 2 and commonly expressed as a “rounded off” decimal number. For example,
one megabyte (“one million bytes”) is actually 1,048,576 (decimal) bytes.

Octet

In some systems, the term octet is used for an eight-bit unit instead of byte. In many
systems, four eight-bit bytes or octets form a 32-bit word. In such systems, instructions
lengths are sometimes expressed as full-word (32 bits in length) or half-word (16 bits in
length).

Kilobyte

A Kilobyte (kb or Kbyte) is approximately a thousand bytes (actually, 2 to the 10th

power, or decimal 1,024 bytes).

Megabyte

As a measure of computer processor storage and real and virtual memory, a megabyte
(abbreviated MB) is 2 to the 20th power byte or 1,048,576 bytes in decimal notation.

Gigabyte

A Gigabyte (pronounced Gig-a-bite with hard G’s) is a measure of computer data storage
capacity and is “roughly” a billion bytes. A gigabyte is two to the 30th power or
1,073,741,824 in decimal notation.
Terabyte

A Terabyte is a measure of computer storage capacity and is 2 to the 40th power of 1024
gigabytes.

Petabyte

A Petabyte (PB) is a measure of memory or storage capacity and is 2 to the 50th power
bytes or, in decimal, approximately a thousand terabytes (1024 terabytes).

Exabyte

An Exabyte (EB) is a large unit of computer data storage, two to the sixtieth power
bytes. The prefix exa means one billion, or on quintillion, which is a decimal term. Two
to the sixtieth power is actually 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes in decimal, or
somewhat over a quintillion (or ten to the eighteenth power) bytes. It is common to say
that an Exabyte is approximately one quintillion bytes. In decimal terms, an Exabyte is a
billion gigabytes.

Zettabyte

A Zettabyte (ZB) is equal to one sextillion bytes. It is commonly abbreviated ZB. At this
time, no computer has one Zettabyte of storage. It has 1024 Exabytes.

Yottabyte

A Yottabyte is equal to one septillion bytes. It is commonly abbreviated YB. At this time,
no computer has one Zettabyte of storage. It has 1024 Zettabytes.