Major Developments in Hardware and Software

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Major Developments in Hardware and Software Introduction To the present computers only they have left two generations more to be able to continue being at the same time smaller and more powerful, the two generations that calculate that they allow the present technologies of miniaturization of its basic circuits. The perspective of not being able to maintain this tendency does not please anything to the physicists and computer science technicians, reason why, supported by the great companies of the sector, are looking for new approaches completely for the computers of the future. No of these approaches appears simple but all are suggestive, although to risk to imagine one of these computers - molecular, quantum or from DNA is still premature. Whatever it buys a computer nowadays knows that it will be obsolete in a pair of years. Now we give by seated the inexorable increase of the power of the computers. But that cannot follow eternally thus, at least, if the computers continue being based on the present technologies. Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel and one of gurus of the technology of the information, anticipate that the existing methods of miniaturization only will offer two generations more of computers before its capacity is exhausted. In 1965, Moore made a prediction that was confirmed with amazing precision in the three following decades: the power of the computers would duplicate every 18 months. This increase has been due mainly to the more and more small size of the electronic components, so that every time a microprocessor or chip can be introduced more of them in. A modern chip of only half square centimeter ... ... middle of paper ... ... important. But all their possible uses are so many, that specialists are needed, like in the medicine, of each one of their parts. There per 1947, when the transistor was invented, and when Jaquard (1804) designed a loom that performed predefined tasks through feeding punched cards into a reading contraption; nobody imagined how quickly that it would take to get the nowadays supercomputers. Resources http://www.thocp.net/software/software_reference/introduction_to_software_history.htm http://www.softwarehistory.org/index.html http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.htm http://www.libredebate.com/doc/doc199911070002.html http://www.elrinconcito.com/articulos/cibernetica/cibernetica.htm http://www.salon.com/tech/special/opensource/ http://www.ciberperiodismo.net/gorka/noticias/63/notiimpr

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