Computer

Microprocessor- one of the remarkable technical breakthrough


Microprocessor is infact CPU in a single chip which is the heart of microcomputer.It is the outcome of advancement in fabrication technology in computer science which have assisted us to render much robust features to today's computers.


Microprocessor is electronic circuit that functions as the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer, providing computational control. Microprocessors are  used in other advanced electronic systems, such as computer printers, automobiles, and jet airliners.

A microprocessor consists of several different sections: The arithmetic/logic unit (ALU) performs calculations on numbers and makes logical decisions; the registers are special memory locations for storing temporary information much as a scratch pad does; the control unit deciphers programs; buses carry digital information throughout the chip and computer; and local memory supports on-chip computation. More complex microprocessors often contain other sections—such as sections of specialized memory, called cache memory, to speed up access to external data-storage devices. Modern microprocessors operate with bus widths of 64 bits (binary digits, or units of information represented as 1s and 0s), meaning that 64 bits of data can be transferred at the same time.

A crystal oscillator in the computer provides a clock signal to coordinate all activities of the microprocessor. The clock speed of the most advanced microprocessors allows billions of computer instructions to be executed every second.

Fifth Generation Computers: Dream of Advancement of Computer Technology

The concept of fifth generation computers is emerging in the field

of computer science with dream to achieve expert systems,

natural language processing capability, artificial intelligence,

advanced decision making capability etc. Japan is taking

keen interest and lead in this race.

Throughout these multiple generations up to the 1990s,

Japan had largely been a follower in the computing arena,

building computers following U.S. and British leads.

The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI)

decided to attempt to break out of this follow-the-leader

pattern, and in the mid-1970s started looking, on a small scale,

into the future of computing. They asked the

Japan Information Processing Development Center (JIPDEC)

to indicate a number of future directions, and in 1979

offered a three-year contract to carry out more in-depth

studies along with industry and academia. It was during

this period that the term "fifth-generation computer" started

to be used.

So ingrained was the belief that parallel computing was

the future of all performance gains that the Fifth-Generation

project generated a great deal of apprehension in the

computer field. After having seen the Japanese take over

the consumer electronics field during the 1970s and

apparently doing the same in the automotive world during

the 1980s, the Japanese in the 1980s had a reputation for

invincibility. Soon parallel projects were set up in the

US as the Strategic Computing Initiative and the

Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC),

in the UK as Alvey, and in Europe as the European Strategic

Program on Research in Information Technology (ESPRIT),

as well as ECRC (European Computer Research Centre)

in Munich, a collaboration between ICL in Britain,

Bull in France, and Siemens in Germany.

Five running Parallel Inference Machines (PIM) were

eventually produced: PIM/m, PIM/p, PIM/i, PIM/k, PIM/c.

The project also produced applications to run on these

systems, such as the parallel database management system

Kappa, the legal reasoning system HELIC-II, and the

automated theorem prover MGTP, as well as applications

to bioinformatics.

The FGCS Project did not meet with commercial success for

reasons similar to the Lisp machine companies and Thinking

Machines. The highly parallel computer architecture was

eventually surpassed in speed by less specialized hardware

(for example, Sun workstations and Intel x86 machines).

The project did produce a new generation of promising

Japanese researchers. But after the FGCS Project, MITI

stopped funding large-scale computer research projects,

and the research momentum developed by the FGCS Project

dissipated. However MITI/ICOT embarked on a Sixth Project

in the 1990s.

                                         

Primary Problems:

1.            Choice of concurrent logic programming as the bridge

between the parallel computer architecture and the use

of logic as a knowledge representation and problem

solving language for AI applications.

2.            Existing CPU performance

3.            Scenario of being on the wrong side of the technology curve

like GUI and internet effects in project life-cycle

In spite of the possibility of considering the project

a failure, many of the approaches envisioned in the

Fifth-Generation project, such as logic programming

distributed over massive knowledge-bases, are now being

re-interpreted in current technologies. The

Web Ontology Language (OWL) employs several layers

of logic-based knowledge representation systems,

while many flavors of parallel computing proliferate,

including multi-core architectures at the low-end and

massively parallel processing at the high end.

Timeline

1982: the FGCS project begins and receives $450,000,000

worth of industry funding and an equal amount of government

funding.

1985: the first FGCS hardware known as the Personal

Sequential Inference Machine (PSI) and the first version

of the Sequential Inference Machine Programming

Operating System (SIMPOS) operating system is released.

SIMPOS is programmed in Kernel Language 0 (KL0),

a concurrent Prolog-variant with object oriented extensions.