Computer Architecture is one of the several areas of Computer Science. In it, some metrics are studied and defined to organize the internal components of a computer in order to better meet its hardware and software needs. Its development is directly related to the development of all other technologies. How to distribute the internal components through the computer's motherboard? How to get them to "talk" to each other? These are some of the questions that Computer Architecture deals with in a very simplified way.
Throughout the history of computing, Computer Architecture was responsible for significant advances in terms of processing power, reduction in the size of electronic components and several other innovations that made possible the creation of all the computational technology present today. The development of this branch of technology demonstrates an exponential growth, much of this development has interference in the graphics that we can find on the internet relating the advances in technology over time.
If in the last 100 years we have developed more technology than in the previous 2,000 years, we owe it in large part to the emergence and development of Computer Architecture.
Below we will list 3 times in which computer architecture revolutionized the world. It is important to emphasize that despite being presented in chronological order, it is quite difficult to estimate which event had the greatest impact on the technological development we have today. However, it is possible to affirm that all the events mentioned in fact revolutionized our world.
1st - Digitized Computing
In the early days of what is considered modern computing, computers with digital components emerged. Prior to this period, data processing was done mechanically from the reading of metal cards embedded with holes in order to store a certain amount of information inside them. To read and interpret this type of card, mechanical devices were used that slid over this card and were able to perceive where each hole was and, based on that, interpret this as some type of information.
This method of storing and interpreting data was extremely problematic, imagine that if one of the holes in the metal plate was done wrongly, it was necessary to discard it and start all over again.
In addition to this problem, reading and writing data from these cards was quite time-consuming due to the rusticity of the entire process.
Still with strong government incentive on account of the various war benefits related to computers, in 1946 the first analog-mechanical computer was created, which was given the name of ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator). It is estimated that at the time it was launched, ENIAC had the capacity to process data up to a thousand times the capacity of other 100% mechanical computers.
The revolution promoted by ENIAC was in the sense of replacing components that needed movement (mechanical components) to perform their functions with digital components. The valves that came to be equipped in this project allowed the entry of data in this machine to be done without the need to move parts manually, which was one of the main problems of the mechanical method used previously.
At that time it was common that to use a computer it was necessary for more than 20 people to work on it at the same time due to the immense amount of movement required to do the simplest of tasks. At that time, the use of computers was still more associated with military purposes or in a few large companies at the time, the concept of personal computers was not even thought of as something possible.
Another interesting curiosity about ENIAC is its size. With about 25m long and 5.5m high, the ENIAC weighed 30 tons, imagine you having to run a script to add 100 numbers to each other on a 30 tons machine, which today seems absurd was the latest technology of this era.
2nd - Adoption of Transistors
Just a few decades after the launch of ENIAC, the world-renowned company IBM launched on the market a computer named IBM 7030 on the market. This machine, unlike all those created so far, started to use transistors instead of tubes and this caused a gigantic revolution related to the size of computers, as described above in the case of ENIAC having a 30-ton machine to do calculations was not very practical, so thanks to IBM humanity can begin to glimpse a future in which computers were something more accessible to the population in general.
Thanks to the adoption of transistors in the composition of processors today we have portable computers that often measure less than 2cm in thickness, and in addition, as increasingly smaller transistors could be developed in addition to the space occupied decreasing the processing power of these processors grew in the inverse proportion.
Still closely related to government investments, the IBM 7030 made it possible for computers to be installed in conventional rooms and, moreover, could be moved with greater ease in case of military attacks and other difficulties experienced at the time.
One of the main problems with these machines at the time they were released was their price. As they occupy a much smaller area, these machines were in great demand, making a single copy cost more than 13 million dollars at the time. In addition to the practicality of having a very small size, the IBM 7030 was the first computer capable of performing calculations in microseconds, that is, performing 1 million calculations in one second.
3rd - Microprocessors
A few decades after the previous revolutions, by the 1970s microprocessors had become the "new norm" of computer architecture. Over the years after the adoption of transistors, the trend was that increasingly over time the size of these transistors decreased, thus increasing energy efficiency and also the capacity and speed of data processing.
This reduced size of processors made possible the existence for examples of cell phones and portable computers. To try to give an idea of the level of engineering related to Computer Architecture that we already have these days, the new Apple processors with the M1 name released recently have transistors in the dimension of 5 nanometers. A nanometer corresponds to a meter divided into 1 billion equal parts. To make a comparison, recent studies indicate that the diameter of the virus causing COVID-19 is 25 to 50 nanometers on average. That is, transistors 5 times smaller than a virus.
Expectations for the future:
One of the strongest bets related to Computer Architecture for the coming years is quantum computing and, in fact, if the full potential foreseen for this technology is reached, we can say that the revolution caused will be even greater than those mentioned above if we think about processing capacity and data processing speed.
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