A quick history of computers ENGR 40M Chuan-Zheng Lee Stanford - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

A quick history of computers ENGR 40M Chuan-Zheng Lee Stanford University 10 July 2017

Vacuum tubes • ENIAC, 1946 • 18,000 vacuum tubes http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1-2-920 ENGR 40M Summer 2017 — C.Z. Lee, J. Plummer, R. Howe

Bipolar junction transistor • Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley, 1947 • Nobel Prize in Physics, 1956 ENGR 40M Summer 2017 — C.Z. Lee, J. Plummer, R. Howe

• • Miniaturization • • • • • 1960 and 1990 i nt egr at • Point contact transistor First integrated circuit Modern microprocessor • ’ • ’ 1947 1958 “ ” “ ” • MOSFETs were invented in 1959 (Kahng and Atalla, Bell Labs) • Modern silicon chips have billions of components in a 1 cm² area. ENGR 40M Summer 2017 — C.Z. Lee, J. Plummer, R. Howe

Moore’s law “The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase.” — Gordon Moore, 1965 ENGR 40M Summer 2017 — C.Z. Lee, J. Plummer, R. Howe

Transistors, transistors, transistors • The processor in your computer is basically billions of transistors. ENGR 40M Summer 2017 — C.Z. Lee, J. Plummer, R. Howe