What were the First PCs Like?

The world's first general-purpose computer "ENIAC" was born on February 14, 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania. The inventors were Americans John W. Mauchly and J. PresperEckert. ^[1]

First generation computer

ENIAC, the world's first electronic computer, covers an area of 170 square meters and weighs 30 tons. It consumes about 150 kilowatts of electricity per hour and can perform 5,000 calculations per second. Used by the US Department of Defense for ballistic calculations.

Computer

The world's first electronic computer was a behemoth: it weighed more than 30 tons, covered an area of about 170 square meters, and contained 18,000 electron tubes in its belly. It was born on February 14, 1946, at the University of Pennsylvania.

In World War II, both opposing sides used aircraft and artillery to violently bombard each other's military targets. To be accurate, you must accurately calculate and draw a "shooting chart". By looking at the table to determine the angle of the muzzle, the shot can only hit the target. However, each number must be calculated thousands of times with four calculations, and a dozen people use a mechanical computer to calculate for a few months before they can complete a "graph". In response to this situation, people began to study the use of electronic tubes as "electronic switches" to increase the computing speed of computers. Many scientists participated in the experiments and research, and finally made the world's first electronic computer, named "Eniac".

In the mid-1940s, the United States

Development of domestic computer (1965-1972)

In 1965, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully developed China's first large-scale transistor computer: the 109 B machine; the 109 B machine was improved, and the 109 C machine was launched two years later. For "meritorious machine." The North China Institute of Computing Technology has successfully developed 108, 108 B (DJS-6), 121 (DJS-21), and 320 (DJS-8) machines, and produced them in five factories including the 738 factory. From 1965 to 1975, the 738 plant produced more than 380 second-generation products including 320 machines. Kazakhstan (the predecessor of the National Defense University of Science and Technology) successfully launched a 441B transistor computer in February 1965 and produced more than 40 units in small batches.

Computer development of small and medium-sized integrated circuits in China (1973-80s)

In 1973, Peking University cooperated with Beijing Cable Power Plant and other units to successfully develop a large-scale general-purpose computer with a computing speed of 1 million times per second. In 1974, Tsinghua University and other units jointly designed and successfully developed the DJS-130 small computer, and later pushed the DJS-140 small computer Machine to form 100 series products. At the same time, with the North China Institute of Computing Technology as the main base, it organized 57 units nationwide to jointly design the DJS-200 series computer design, and also designed and developed the DJS-180 series super minicomputer. In the late 1970s, the 32 Ministry of Electronics and National Defense

HKUST has successfully developed 655 aircraft and 151 aircraft, each with a speed of one million. In the 1980s, China's high-speed computers, especially vector computers, had new developments.

Computer development of domestic VLSI (mid-1980s to present)

Like foreign countries, the development of the fourth-generation computer in China also began with a microcomputer. At the beginning of 1980, many units in China also started to use Z80, X86 and 6502 chips to develop microcomputers. In 1983, the DJS-0520 microcomputer compatible with IBM PC was successfully developed by the sixth institute of the Ministry of Electronics. For more than 10 years, the Chinese microcomputer industry has taken an extraordinary path.

Chinese achievements

In 1958, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully developed China's first small electronic tube general-purpose computer 103 (Bayi), marking the birth of China's first electronic computer.

In 1965, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully developed the first large-scale transistor computer 109B, and later launched the 109C machine, which played an important role in the two bomb test

In 1974, Tsinghua University and other units jointly designed and developed a DJS-130 small computer using integrated circuits, with a computing speed of 1 million times per second;

In 1983, the National University of Defense Technology successfully developed the Galaxy-I supercomputer with a computing speed of hundreds of millions of times per second, which is an important milestone in the development of high-speed computers in China;

In 1985, the Computer Management Bureau of the Ministry of Electronics Industry successfully developed the Great Wall 0520CH microcomputer compatible with the IBM PC.

In 1992, the National University of Defense Technology developed the Galaxy-II universal parallel supercomputer with a peak speed of 400 million floating-point operations per second (equivalent to 1 billion basic arithmetic operations per second). It is a four-processor vector machine that shares main memory. , Its vector central processing unit is designed by small and medium-sized integrated circuits, and generally reached the international advanced level in the mid-to-late 1980s. It is mainly used for medium-term weather forecasting;

In 1993, the National Intelligent Computer Research and Development Center (later Beijing Shuguang Computer Co., Ltd.) successfully developed the Shuguang No. 1 fully symmetric shared memory multiprocessor. This is the first time in China that a general-purpose microprocessor chip and standard UN based on a large-scale integrated circuit Parallel computer designed and developed by operating system;

In 1995, Shuguang introduced the first parallel machine Shuguang 1000 (including 36 processors) with a large-scale parallel processor (MPP) structure in China, with a peak speed of 2.5 billion floating-point operations per second. This is a high-performance step of 1 billion floating-point operations per second. Sugon 1000 is similar to the large-scale parallel machine architecture and implementation technology introduced by American Intel Corporation in 1990, and the gap with foreign countries has narrowed to about 5 years.

In 1997, the National Defense University of Science and Technology successfully developed the Galaxy-III 10 billion parallel supercomputer system, which adopts a scalable distributed shared storage parallel processing architecture, consisting of more than 130 processing nodes, with a peak performance of 13 billion floating-point operations per second. The comprehensive system technology reached the international advanced level in the mid-1990s.

From 1997 to 1999, Dawning Company successively launched Dawning 1000A, Dawning 2000-I and Dawning 2000-II super servers with cluster structure in the market. The peak computing speed has exceeded 100 billion floating-point operations per second, and the machine scale More than 160 processors,

In 1999, the Shenwei I computer developed by the National Parallel Computer Engineering Technology Research Center passed national acceptance and was put into operation at the National Meteorological Center. The system has 384 arithmetic processing units, with a peak operation speed of 384 billion times per second

In 2000, Shuguang launched the Shuguang 3000 super server with 300 billion floating-point operations per second.

In 2001, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully developed China's first general-purpose CPU, the "Godson" chip.

In 2002, Sugon introduced the "Longteng" server with completely independent intellectual property rights. The Longteng server uses the "Longxin-1" CPU, a server-specific motherboard jointly developed by Shuguang Company and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Computing Institute, and adopts the Shuguang LINUX operating system. It is the first product in China to fully realize its own property rights and will play a major role in national defense and security departments. In 2003, Dawning 4000L, a data processing super server with a capacity of 1,000 billion times, passed the national acceptance, and once again broke the historical record of domestic super servers, making the domestic high-performance industry reach a new level.

On April 9, 2003, 61 integrated circuit enterprises including Suzhou Guoxin, Nanjing Panda, SMIC, Shanghai Grace, Shanghai Belling, Hangzhou Shilan, Beijing National Integrated Circuit Industrialization Base, Peking University, Tsinghua University, etc. The formed "C * Core (China Core) Industry Alliance" was announced in Nanjing, seeking to work together to build a complete industrial chain of China's integrated circuits. On December 9, 2003, the national grid master node "Shen Teng 6800" supercomputer undertaken by Lenovo was officially developed. Its actual operation speed reached 4.183 trillion times per second, ranking 14th in the world and operating efficiency of 78.5%.

On December 28, 2003, the "China Core Engineering" Achievement Report Meeting was held in the Great Hall of the People. China's "Starlight China Core" project developed and designed 5th generation digital multimedia chips, occupying computers in the international market with over 40% market share The world's number one image input chip.

At the executive meeting of the State Council on March 24, 2004, the "Electronic Signature Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft)" was adopted in principle, which marked that China's electronic business was gradually entering the legal system.

On June 21, 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced the latest list of the top 500 computers in the world. The supercomputer "Dawning 4000A" developed by Shuguang Computer Co. ranked tenth, with an operating speed of 8.061 trillion times.

The electronic signature law was officially implemented on April 1, 2005. The Electronic Signature Law of the People's Republic of China was officially implemented. Electronic signatures have the same legal effect as traditional handwritten signatures and stamps, and will promote and regulate the development of electronic transactions in China.

On April 18, 2005, "Godson II" officially appeared. China's first general-purpose high-performance CPU "Longxin II" developed by the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences officially debuted.

On May 1, 2005, Lenovo completed the acquisition of IBM PC. Lenovo officially announced the completion of the acquisition of IBM's global PC business. Lenovo has become the world's third largest PC manufacturer with a combined annual revenue of about $ 13 billion and annual sales of about 14 million units of personal computers.