A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as Computer program. These programs enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks. The term computer system may refer to a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system, software, and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation; or to a group of computers that are linked and function together, such as a computer network or computer cluster.
A broad range of industrial and consumer products use computers as , including simple special-purpose devices like and , and factory devices like . Computers are at the core of general-purpose devices such as personal computers and such as . Computers power the Internet, which links billions of computers and users.
Early computers were meant to be used only for calculations. Simple manual instruments like the abacus have aided people in doing calculations since ancient times. Early in the Industrial Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to automate long, tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for . More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in the early 20th century. The first Digital data electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II, both electromechanical and using . The first semiconductor in the late 1940s were followed by the silicon-based MOSFET (MOS transistor) and monolithic integrated circuit chip technologies in the late 1950s, leading to the microprocessor and the microcomputer revolution in the 1970s. The speed, power, and versatility of computers have been increasing dramatically ever since then, with increasing at a rapid pace (Moore's law noted that counts doubled every two years), leading to the Digital Revolution during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit (CPU) in the form of a microprocessor, together with some type of computer memory, typically semiconductor memory chips. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing and control unit can change the order of operations in response to stored data. Peripheral devices include input devices (keyboards, mice, joystick, etc.), output devices (monitor screens, printers, etc.), and input/output devices that perform both functions (e.g., the 2000s-era touchscreen). Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source, and they enable the results of operations to be saved and retrieved.
The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the first attested use of computer in the 1640s, meaning 'one who calculates'; this is an "agent noun from compute (v.)". The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean calculating machine' (of any type) is from 1897." The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the "modern use" of the term, to mean 'programmable digital electronic computer' dates from "1945 under this name; in theoretical sense from 1937, as Turing machine". The name has remained, although modern computers are capable of many higher-level functions.
The abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from devices used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BCE. Since then, many other forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money.
The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer, according to Derek J. de Solla Price. The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project , The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project. Retrieved 1 July 2007. It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to approximately . Devices of comparable complexity to the Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until the fourteenth century.
Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Al-Biruni in the early 11th century.G. Wiet, V. Elisseeff, P. Wolff, J. Naudu (1975). History of Mankind, Vol 3: The Great medieval Civilisations, p. 649. George Allen & Unwin Ltd, UNESCO. The astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd centuries BCE and is often attributed to Hipparchus. A combination of the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was effectively an analog computer capable of working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy. An astrolabe incorporating a mechanical calendar computerFuat Sezgin "Catalogue of the Exhibition of the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science (at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University", Frankfurt, Germany) Frankfurt Book Fair 2004, pp. 35 & 38. and gear-wheels was invented by Abi Bakr of Isfahan, Persia in 1235. Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī invented the first mechanical geared lunisolar calendar astrolabe, an early fixed- knowledge processing machine with a gear train and gear-wheels,Donald Routledge Hill (1985). "Al-Biruni's mechanical calendar", Annals of Science 42, pp. 139–163. .
The sector, a calculating instrument used for solving problems in proportion, trigonometry, multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares and cube roots, was developed in the late 16th century and found application in gunnery, surveying and navigation.
The planimeter was a manual instrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by tracing over it with a mechanical linkage.
The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630 by the English clergyman William Oughtred, shortly after the publication of the concept of the logarithm. It is a hand-operated analog computer for doing multiplication and division. As slide rule development progressed, added scales provided reciprocals, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as logarithms and exponentials, circular and hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions. Slide rules with special scales are still used for quick performance of routine calculations, such as the E6B circular slide rule used for time and distance calculations on light aircraft.
In the 1770s, Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, built a mechanical doll (automata) that could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order of its internal wheels different letters, and hence different messages, could be produced. In effect, it could be mechanically "programmed" to read instructions. Along with two other complex machines, the doll is at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and still operates.
In 1831–1835, mathematician and engineer Giovanni Plana devised a Perpetual Calendar machine, which, through a system of pulleys and cylinders and over, could predict the perpetual calendar for every year from 0 CE (that is, 1 BCE) to 4000 CE, keeping track of leap years and varying day length. The tide-predicting machine invented by the Scottish scientist Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location.
The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integral, used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. In 1876, Sir William Thomson had already discussed the possible construction of such calculators, but he had been stymied by the limited output torque of the ball-and-disk integrators.Ray Girvan, "The revealed grace of the mechanism: computing after Babbage" , Scientific Computing World, May/June 2003 In a differential analyzer, the output of one integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a graphing output. The torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work. Starting in the 1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers.
In the 1890s, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo began to develop a series of advanced analog machines that could solve real and complex roots of Polynomial,Leonardo Torres. Memoria sobre las máquinas algébricas: con un informe de la Real academia de ciencias exactas, fisicas y naturales, Misericordia, 1895. which were published in 1901 by the Paris Academy of Sciences.
After working on his difference engine he announced his invention in 1822, in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society, titled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables", he also designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that a much more general design, an analytical engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via , a method being used at the time to direct mechanical such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The engine would incorporate an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated computer memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.
The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906.
The art of mechanical analog computing reached its zenith with the differential analyzer, built by H. L. Hazen and Vannevar Bush at MIT starting in 1927. This built on the mechanical integrators of James Thomson and the torque amplifiers invented by H. W. Nieman. A dozen of these devices were built before their obsolescence became obvious. By the 1950s, the success of digital electronic computers had spelled the end for most analog computing machines, but analog computers remained in use during the 1950s in some specialized applications such as education (slide rule) and aircraft ().
Early digital computers were electromechanics; electric switches drove mechanical relays to perform the calculation. These devices had a low operating speed and were eventually superseded by much faster all-electric computers, originally using . The Z2, created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1939 in Berlin, was one of the earliest examples of an electromechanical relay computer.
In 1941, Zuse followed his earlier machine up with the Z3, the world's first working electromechanical programmable, fully automatic digital computer. The Z3 was built with 2000 , implementing a 22 bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hertz. Program code was supplied on punched celluloid while data could be stored in 64 words of memory or supplied from the keyboard. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering numerous advances such as floating-point numbers. Rather than the harder-to-implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage's earlier design), using a binary number system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time. The Z3 was not itself a universal computer but could be extended to be Turing complete.
Zuse's next computer, the Z4, became the world's first commercial computer; after initial delay due to the Second World War, it was completed in 1950 and delivered to the ETH Zurich. The computer was manufactured by Zuse's own company, Zuse KG, which was founded in 1941 as the first company with the sole purpose of developing computers in Berlin.
During World War II, the British code-breakers at Bletchley Park achieved a number of successes at breaking encrypted German military communications. The German encryption machine, Enigma machine, was first attacked with the help of the electro-mechanical which were often run by women. To crack the more sophisticated German Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine, used for high-level Army communications, Max Newman and his colleagues commissioned Flowers to build the Colossus. He spent eleven months from early February 1943 designing and building the first Colossus. After a functional test in December 1943, Colossus was shipped to Bletchley Park, where it was delivered on 18 January 1944 and attacked its first message on 5 February.
Colossus was the world's first electronics digital programmable computer. It used a large number of valves (vacuum tubes). It had paper-tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of operations on its data, but it was not Turing-complete. Nine Mk II Colossi were built (The Mk I was converted to a Mk II making ten machines in total). Colossus Mark I contained 1,500 thermionic valves (tubes), but Mark II with 2,400 valves, was both five times faster and simpler to operate than Mark I, greatly speeding the decoding process.
The ENIACJohn Presper Eckert Jr. and John W. Mauchly, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, United States Patent Office, US Patent 3,120,606, filed 26 June 1947, issued 4 February 1964, and invalidated 19 October 1973 after court ruling on Honeywell v. Sperry Rand. (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic programmable computer built in the U.S. Although the ENIAC was similar to the Colossus, it was much faster, more flexible, and it was Turing-complete. Like the Colossus, a "program" on the ENIAC was defined by the states of its patch cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that came later. Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches. The programmers of the ENIAC were six women, often known collectively as the "ENIAC girls".
It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and square root. High speed memory was limited to 20 words (about 80 bytes). Built under the direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC's development and construction lasted from 1943 to full operation at the end of 1945. The machine was huge, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors.
The Manchester Baby was the world's first stored-program computer. It was built at the University of Manchester in England by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948. It was designed as a testbed for the Williams tube, the first random-access digital storage device. Although the computer was described as "small and primitive" by a 1998 retrospective, it was the first working machine to contain all of the elements essential to a modern electronic computer. As soon as the Baby had demonstrated the feasibility of its design, a project began at the university to develop it into a practically useful computer, the Manchester Mark 1.
The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer. 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. 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. Lyons's LEO computer computer, modelled closely on the Cambridge EDSAC of 1949, became operational in April 1951 and ran the world's first routine office computer job.
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. Their first transistorized 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, built by the electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell.
The MOSFET (MOSFET), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturized and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. With its MOSFET scaling, and much lower power consumption and higher density than bipolar junction transistors, the MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuits. 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,
The first working ICs were invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor. Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit in July 1958, successfully demonstrating the first working integrated example on 12 September 1958. The Chip that Jack Built , (c. 2008), (HTML), Texas Instruments, Retrieved 29 May 2008. 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".Jack S. Kilby, Miniaturized Electronic Circuits, United States Patent Office, US Patent 3,138,743, filed 6 February 1959, issued 23 June 1964. However, Kilby's invention was a hybrid integrated circuit (hybrid IC), rather than a monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip. Kilby's IC had external wire connections, which made it difficult to mass-produce.
Noyce also came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year later than Kilby.Robert Noyce's Unitary circuit, . Noyce's invention was the first true monolithic IC chip. 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 Mohamed M. Atalla's work on semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide in the late 1950s.
Modern monolithic ICs are predominantly MOS (metal–oxide–semiconductor) integrated circuits, built from (MOS transistors). The earliest experimental MOS IC to be fabricated was a 16-transistor chip built by Fred Heiman and Steven Hofstein at RCA in 1962. General Microelectronics later introduced the first commercial MOS IC in 1964, developed by Robert Norman. 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. The MOSFET has since become the most critical device component in modern ICs.
The development of the MOS integrated circuit led to the invention of the microprocessor,
System on a Chip (SoCs) are complete computers on a microchip (or chip) the size of a coin. 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 do not 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.
These and tablet computer run on a variety of operating systems and recently became the dominant computing device on the market. These are powered by System on a Chip (SoCs), which are complete computers on a microchip the size of a coin.
Pascal's calculator, Arithmometer, Difference engine, Quevedo's analytical machines |
Jacquard loom, Analytical engine, IBM ASCC/Harvard Mark I, Harvard Mark II, IBM SSEC, Z1, Z2, Z3 |
Atanasoff–Berry Computer, IBM 604, UNIVAC 60, UNIVAC 120 |
Colossus, ENIAC, Manchester Baby, EDSAC, Manchester Mark 1, Ferranti Pegasus, Ferranti Mercury, CSIRAC, EDVAC, UNIVAC I, IBM 701, IBM 702, IBM 650, Z22 |
IBM 7090, IBM 7080, IBM System/360, BUNCH |
HP 2116A, IBM System/32, IBM System/36, LINC, PDP-8, PDP-11 |
HP 9100 |
VAX, IBM AS/400 |
Intel 4004, Intel 4040 |
Intel 8008, Intel 8080, Motorola 6800, Motorola 6809, MOS Technology 6502, Zilog Z80 |
Intel 8088, Zilog Z8000, WDC 65816/65802 |
Intel 80386, Pentium, Motorola 68000, ARM |
DEC Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC, SPARC, x86-64, ARMv8-A |
Intel 8048, Intel 8051 |
Desktop computer, Home computer, Laptop computer, Personal digital assistant (PDA), Portable computer, tablet computer, Wearable computer |
IBM Q System One |
Computer mouse, keyboard, joystick, image scanner, webcam, graphics tablet, microphone |
computer monitor, printer, loudspeaker |
Floppy disk drive, hard disk drive, optical disc drive, teleprinter |
RS-232, SCSI, PCI, USB |
Ethernet, ATM, FDDI |
A general-purpose computer has four main components: the arithmetic logic unit (ALU), the control unit, the memory, and the input and output devices (collectively termed I/O). These parts are interconnected by buses, often made of groups of . Inside each of these parts are thousands to trillions of small electrical circuits which can be turned off or on by means of an transistor. Each circuit represents a bit (binary digit) of information so that when the circuit is on it represents a "1", and when off it represents a "0" (in positive logic representation). The circuits are arranged in so that one or more of the circuits may control the state of one or more of the other circuits.
A key component common to all CPUs is the program counter, a special memory cell (a register) that keeps track of which location in memory the next instruction is to be read from.
The control system's function is as follows— this is a simplified description, and some of these steps may be performed concurrently or in a different order depending on the type of CPU:
Since the program counter is (conceptually) just another set of memory cells, it can be changed by calculations done in the ALU. Adding 100 to the program counter would cause the next instruction to be read from a place 100 locations further down the program. Instructions that modify the program counter are often known as "jumps" and allow for loops (instructions that are repeated by the computer) and often conditional instruction execution (both examples of control flow).
The sequence of operations that the control unit goes through to process an instruction is in itself like a short computer program, and indeed, in some more complex CPU designs, there is another yet smaller computer called a microsequencer, which runs a microcode program that causes all of these events to happen.
Superscalar computers may contain multiple ALUs, allowing them to process several instructions simultaneously. Graphics processors and computers with SIMD and MIMD features often contain ALUs that can perform arithmetic on Euclidean vector and matrices.
In almost all modern computers, each memory cell is set up to store in groups of eight bits (called a byte). Each byte is able to represent 256 different numbers (28 = 256); either from 0 to 255 or −128 to +127. To store larger numbers, several consecutive bytes may be used (typically, two, four or eight). When negative numbers are required, they are usually stored in two's complement notation. Other arrangements are possible, but are usually not seen outside of specialized applications or historical contexts. A computer can store any kind of information in memory if it can be represented numerically. Modern computers have billions or even trillions of bytes of memory.
The CPU contains a special set of memory cells called registers that can be read and written to much more rapidly than the main memory area. There are typically between two and one hundred registers depending on the type of CPU. Registers are used for the most frequently needed data items to avoid having to access main memory every time data is needed. As data is constantly being worked on, reducing the need to access main memory (which is often slow compared to the ALU and control units) greatly increases the computer's speed.
Computer main memory comes in two principal varieties:
In more sophisticated computers there may be one or more RAM CPU cache, which are slower than registers but faster than main memory. Generally computers with this sort of cache are designed to move frequently needed data into the cache automatically, often without the need for any intervention on the programmer's part.
Before the era of inexpensive computers, the principal use for multitasking was to allow many people to share the same computer. Seemingly, multitasking would cause a computer that is switching between several programs to run more slowly, in direct proportion to the number of programs it is running, but most programs spend much of their time waiting for slow input/output devices to complete their tasks. If a program is waiting for the user to click on the mouse or press a key on the keyboard, then it will not take a "time slice" until the event it is waiting for has occurred. This frees up time for other programs to execute so that many programs may be run simultaneously without unacceptable speed loss.
Supercomputers in particular often have highly unique architectures that differ significantly from the basic stored-program architecture and from general-purpose computers. They often feature thousands of CPUs, customized high-speed interconnects, and specialized computing hardware. Such designs tend to be useful for only specialized tasks due to the large scale of program organization required to use most of the available resources at once. Supercomputers usually see usage in large-scale simulation, graphics rendering, and cryptography applications, as well as with other so-called "embarrassingly parallel" tasks.
Operating system /System Software | Unix and BSD| UNIX System V, IBM AIX, HP-UX, Solaris (SunOS), IRIX, List of BSD operating systems |
List of Linux distributions, Comparison of Linux distributions | |
Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11 | |
86-DOS (QDOS), IBM PC DOS, MS-DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS | |
Classic Mac OS, macOS (previously OS X and Mac OS X) | |
List of embedded operating systems | |
Amoeba, Oberon–AOS, Bluebottle, A2, Plan 9 from Bell Labs | |
DirectX, OpenGL, OpenAL, Vulkan | |
C standard library, Standard Template Library | |
TCP/IP, Kermit, FTP, HTTP, SMTP | |
HTML, XML, JPEG, MPEG, PNG | |
Microsoft Windows, GNOME, KDE, QNX Photon, CDE, GEM, Aqua | |
Command-line interface, Text user interface | |
Application Software | Office suite| Word processing, Desktop publishing, Presentation program, Database management system, Scheduling & Time management, Spreadsheet, Accounting software |
Web browser, Email client, Web server, Mail transfer agent, Instant messaging | |
Computer-aided design, Computer-aided manufacturing, Plant management, Robotic manufacturing, Supply chain management | |
Raster graphics editor, Vector graphics editor, 3D modeler, Animation editor, 3D computer graphics, Video editing, Image processing | |
Digital audio editor, Audio playback, Audio mixing, Audio synthesis, Computer music | |
Compiler, Assembler, Interpreter, Debugger, Text editor, Integrated development environment, Software performance analysis, Revision control, Software configuration management | |
Edutainment, Educational game, Serious game, Flight simulator | |
Strategy game, Arcade game, Puzzle, Simulation, First-person shooter, Platform game, Massively multiplayer, Interactive fiction | |
Artificial intelligence, Antivirus software, Malware scanner, Installer/Package management systems, File manager |
+Programming languages | Lists of programming languages| Timeline of programming languages, List of programming languages by category, Generational list of programming languages, List of programming languages, Non-English-based programming languages |
ARM architecture, MIPS, x86 | |
Ada, BASIC, C, C++, C#, COBOL, Fortran, PL/I, REXX, Java, Lisp, Pascal, Object Pascal | |
Bourne shell, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl |
In most cases, computer instructions are simple: add one number to another, move some data from one location to another, send a message to some external device, etc. These instructions are read from the computer's memory and are generally carried out (executed) in the order they were given. However, there are usually specialized instructions to tell the computer to jump ahead or backwards to some other place in the program and to carry on executing from there. These are called "jump" instructions (or branches). Furthermore, jump instructions may be made to happen conditionally so that different sequences of instructions may be used depending on the result of some previous calculation or some external event. Many computers directly support by providing a type of jump that "remembers" the location it jumped from and another instruction to return to the instruction following that jump instruction.
Program execution might be likened to reading a book. While a person will normally read each word and line in sequence, they may at times jump back to an earlier place in the text or skip sections that are not of interest. Similarly, a computer may sometimes go back and repeat the instructions in some section of the program over and over again until some internal condition is met. This is called the control flow within the program and it is what allows the computer to perform tasks repeatedly without human intervention.
Comparatively, a person using a pocket calculator can perform a basic arithmetic operation such as adding two numbers with just a few button presses. But to add together all of the numbers from 1 to 1,000 would take thousands of button presses and a lot of time, with a near certainty of making a mistake. On the other hand, a computer may be programmed to do this with just a few simple instructions. The following example is written in the MIPS assembly language:
begin:
addi $8, $0, 0 # initialize sum to 0
addi $9, $0, 1 # set first number to add = 1
loop:
slti $10, $9, 1000 # check if the number is less than 1000
beq $10, $0, finish # if odd number is greater than n then exit
add $8, $8, $9 # update sum
addi $9, $9, 1 # get next number
j loop # repeat the summing process
finish:
add $2, $8, $0 # put sum in output register
Once told to run this program, the computer will perform the repetitive addition task without further human intervention. It will almost never make a mistake and a modern PC can complete the task in a fraction of a second.
While it is possible to write computer programs as long lists of numbers (machine code) and while this technique was used with many early computers, it is extremely tedious and potentially error-prone to do so in practice, especially for complicated programs. Instead, each basic instruction can be given a short name that is indicative of its function and easy to remember – a mnemonic such as ADD, SUB, MULT or JUMP. These mnemonics are collectively known as a computer's assembly language. Converting programs written in assembly language into something the computer can actually understand (machine language) is usually done by a computer program called an assembler.
In time, the network spread beyond academic and military institutions and became known as the Internet. The emergence of networking involved a redefinition of the nature and boundaries of the computer. Computer operating systems and applications were modified to include the ability to define and access the resources of other computers on the network, such as peripheral devices, stored information, and the like, as extensions of the resources of an individual computer. Initially these facilities were available primarily to people working in high-tech environments, but in the 1990s the spread of applications like e-mail and the World Wide Web, combined with the development of cheap, fast networking technologies like Ethernet and ADSL saw computer networking become almost ubiquitous. In fact, the number of computers that are networked is growing phenomenally. A very large proportion of personal computers regularly connect to the Internet to communicate and receive information. "Wireless" networking, often utilizing mobile phone networks, has meant networking is becoming increasingly ubiquitous even in mobile computing environments.
Of all these , a quantum computer holds the most promise for revolutionizing computing.
+Computer-related professions |
Electrical engineering, Electronic engineering, Computer engineering, Telecommunications engineering, Optical engineering, Nanoengineering |
Computer science, Computer engineering, Desktop publishing, Human–computer interaction, Information technology, Information systems, Computational science, Software engineering, Video game industry, Web design |
The need for computers to work well together and to be able to exchange information has spawned the need for many standards organizations, clubs and societies of both a formal and informal nature.
+Organizations | ANSI, IEC, IEEE, IETF, ISO, W3C |
ACM, AIS, IET, IFIP, BCS | |
Free Software Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Apache Software Foundation |
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