Classification / Types of Computers (based on Performance)

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Based on the way the computer performs the computations, computers can be classified into three. Those are

1. Analog Computers
2. Digital Computers and
3. Hybrid Computers

Analog Computers : These computers operate by measuring physical units such as voltage, pressure, temperature, speed etc. These computers are used for scientific and engineering applications. 

Digital Computers : These computers operate on numbers consisting 0's and 1's. These two numbers are called binary values. The characters and words are also represented in the binary form. (for those people who don't have any idea on how computer handles these 0's and 1's, it cant read 0's and 1's. But it can observe voltage fluctuations. In simple words, if you give high voltage it will treat it as 1. If you give low voltage it will treat it as 0. It also gives output in the same pattern. So 101011 can be read by computer as high voltage, low voltage, high voltage, low voltage, high voltage, high voltage....). These business computers are useful for business as well as scientific and engineering applications. The computer which you are using to read this post is a digital computer. 

 

Hybrid Computers : As the name represents, these computers have the qualities of both Analog and Digital computers. These computers are used for some special purposes. 'ROBOT' (not Rajnikanth's, we are talking about the real robot :P) is the best example of Hybrid Computers.

Some important points you should know about computers classification 

The name of the first operational digital computer (the great grand father of our present computers) was ENIAC (Electronic memory Numerical Integrator and Calculator). It was developed in 1946 by John Mauchy and J. Presper Eckert at the university of Pennsylvania. But this computer is just like Gajhni. It couldn't remember anything. 

Later Professor John Von Newmann gave the idea of stored program concept which is the key concept in the design of today's computers. According to this concept, the program and the data associated to it should be stored in computer's memory during the execution of the program.

EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was the first stored program computer and it became operational in the year 1951.

The architecture of this computer consists of a processor and a memory connected through a single path called communication channel. As there is only a single path, the processor faces problems to get data and instructions. This problem is called Von Newmann Bottleneck.(for non technical students, In simple words, the memory and processor are connected using a single wire. If you ask the processor to calculate a+b, then it should take a value, b value and the instruction to add them. That means there are three things it should get in a single time. But there is only one wire. So it could get only one instruction at the time. this is the problem).

That's the story of computer classification based on its performance friends. In our next post we shall discuss about the classification based on sizes. You can get more computer knowledge related topics from here. Happy Reading :)