Chapter 1 “The big picture”
OUTLINE
Computing Systems
Dynamic Entity
Used to solve problems and interact with its environment
Is composed of hardware and software
Computer Hardware
Is the collection of physical elements that make up the machines
It is related pieces:
Boxes
Circuit boards
Chips
Wires
Computer Software
Is the collection of programs that provide the instructions that a computer a carries out
Layers of a computing System

Abstraction
A mental mode
A way to think about something
Leaves only the information necessary to accomplish our goal.
We rely on abstractions every day of our lives. For example:
A car engine and the abstraction that allows us to use it
The History of Computing
Historical foundation of computing goes a long way that explain:
How computing system are designed as they are
As story whose character and events have led to the place we are now
History of Computing Hardware
Early History
Stonehenge
Famous collection of rock monoliths in Great Britain
Used to an early form of calendar or astrological calculator
Abacus
Appeared in the sixteenth century BC
Instrument used to record numeric values
On which a human can perform basic arithmetic
World War II
By the outbreak several computers were design and construction as
The Harvard Mark I
ENIAC
EDVAC
UNIVAC I
Was the first computer, made in 1951
Used to predict outcome of a presidential election

First Generation (1951-1959)
Commercial computers were built using.
Vacuum tubes
Early form of circuitry
Generated a lot of heat
Fragile
Magnetic Drum
Data storage device
Used as computer memory
Rotated under read/write head

IBM card
Punched card or a line printer

Second Generation (1959-1965)
The advent of the transistors
Made up of semiconductors
Component used to control the amount of current.
Transistors replaced vacuum tubes
Immediate-access memory that replaced the drum memory
Core Memory
Magnetic core memory
Made computers more reliable
Made computers more faster
Made computers easier to make
Magnetic disk
A new auxiliary storage device
More faster than magnetic tape
Each data can be accessed directly
Organized

Third Generation (1965-1971)
Integrated Circuits
Solid pieces of silicon
A package containing many circuits, pathways, transistors
Smaller, cheaper, faster and more reliable than printed circuit
Transistors also were used for memory construction
The Terminal
An input/output device with a keyboard and screen

Fourth Generation (1971-?)
Transistor on a silicon chip in the early 1970s
Microcomputers had become cheap that anyone could have one
Commercial market as
Apple
Radio Shack
Atari
Joined the big companies of earlier generations as IBM
NCR
The IBM PC
1980s

Workstations
Were connected by cables, or networked
Machine languages

Parallel Computing
New machines architectures began appearing in the late 1980s
Computers that use these parallel architectures
Rely on a set of inter-connected central processing units
Offer several ways to increase the speed of execution

Networking
The Ethernet
Invited in 1973
Invited by Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs
Workstations