COMP1116

Applications of ICT

Lecture # 06 Classes of Digital Computers

Instructor: Dr. Aftab Akram (PhD CS)

Assistant Professor
 • Speed of computer is
Speed proportional to number of
Switches (transistors)
• Greater the number of
Power transistors more powerful
computer is
• Increase in number of transistor
Size
increase the size of computer
• Greater the size of computer
Result means more powerful computer
it is
Types of
Digital
Computers
Super Computers

Mainframe Computers

Mini Computers

Micro Computers
 Multi/
Multi/ Size/ Computation Power
Single Price Power
Single User Portable Requirement
Processor

Multi Very large/

Super Multi User $ Million
(few hundreds Not Very high Very High
Computer (Hundreds of )
of thousand) Portable

Multi
(may be few Multi User Large & Not
Mainframe $ Million High High
hundred) Portable

Take small
Single/
Mini Multi Few place but
Multi Reasonable Small
Computer Thousand $ still not
portable

Single Small &

Micro Few Small &
Package/ Single Sufficient battery
Computer Hundred $ Portable
Multi Core operated

Ultra
Few Small & Battery
Portable All in one Single Sufficient
hundred $ Portable operated
Computers
Super Computers
•A supercomputer is a computer
that leads the world in terms of
processing capacity, particularly
speed of calculation
•Computers that have very high
processing speed
 Super Computer: Brief History
• Introduced in 1960 designed primarily by
Seymour Cray
• Super Computers are custom designed.
• These are Special Purpose Computers
• And are used for highly calculation intensive
tasks
• Major Universities, Military Agencies and
Scientific Research Laboratories are heavy
users
Seymour Cray with Cray-1 Super Computer
 Super Computer: Uses
• Super Computers are used in different fields of Science
particularly where intensive calculations are required
– Quantum Mechanical Physics
– Weather Forecasting
– Climate research (including research into global warming)
– Molecular Modeling
– Physical simulations (such as simulation of airplanes in
wind tunnels, simulation of the detonation of nuclear
weapons, and research into nuclear fusion)
– Cryptanalysis
 Top500
• A German Professor Hans Meuer, founded Mannheim
Supercomputing Conference in 1986
• In 1993, started to release a list of 500 most powerful computers in
the world
• List is published twice in a year, June and November
• A form is sent to organizations in the world to submit specification
of their systems
• Performance is scaled on LINPACK Performance Benchmark which is
set of mathematical routines written in FORTRAN
• LINKPACK Benchmark was introduced by Jack Dongarra
• LINPACK is a measure of a computer’s floating-point rate of
execution
 World Fastest Computer
• Speed of Super Computer is measured in FLOPS (Floating Point
Operations Per Second) or Peta FLOPS (1015 FLOPS)
• According to 61st Top500 list released in June 2023, Supercomputer
Frontier is world fastest super computer.
• Also, Frontier is World’s first Exa scale computer.
• It has peak performance of 1.102 Exa FLOPS (1.102 x 1018FLOPS or
1.102 Million Trillion Calculations in a second)
• Theoretical performance is 1.685 Exa FLOPS
• Frontier has 8,730,112 processor cores
• Frontier is installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United
States
• China has 162 of top500 supercomputer, US has 127 of them
Cost: USD 600M
Power Consumption: 21 MW
Space: 680 m2 (7,300 sq ft)
 Super Computing in US
Name Location Rank Power Use

Data Science, Artificial Intelligence

Oak Ridge National
Frontier 1st 1.102 Exa FLOPS Research, Quantum Information
Laboratory/ DoE
System

Data Science, Artificial Intelligence

Oak Ridge National 148.6 Peta
Summit 5th Research, Quantum Information
Laboratory/ DoE FLOPS
System

Defense, Global Security, Weapons,

Siera DOE/NNSA/LLNL 6th 94.6 Peta FLOPS
Engineering etc.

AI, Data Science, climate and the

environment, clean energy technologies,
Perlmutter DOE/SC/LBNL/NERS 8th 70.8 Peta FLOPS semiconductors and microelectronics, and
quantum information science

Selene NVIDIA Corporation 9th 63.4 Peta FLOPS AI, Simulations,

Deep Blue was a chess-playing expert system run on a unique
purpose-built IBM supercomputer. Deep Blue had Artificial
Intelligence

IBM Deep Blue was a Chess Playing Super Computer. In its final
configuration, the IBM RS6000/SP computer used 256 processors
working in tandem, with an ability to evaluate 200 million chess
positions per second.
It was specifically designed to play Chess with Gary Kasparov
(World Chess Champion 1985-2000).

On May 11, 1997, Deep Blue defeated World Champion in

controversial chess match, leading to speculation that Computers
with AI can surpass human intelligence, hence can achieve self
aware.
 Mainframe Computers
• IBM defines mainframes as:
– Computers that can support thousands of applications
and input/output devices to simultaneously serve
thousands of users.
• Mainframe Computers are used to host large commercial
databases, transaction servers, and applications
• Such applications require a greater degree of security and
availability than is commonly found on smaller-scale machines
• Mainframe Computers are used by large organizations for
critical applications
• These are highly reliable Multi Microprocessor systems
• Mainframe Computers Can run years without interruption and
repair taking place during normal operations
 Mainframe Computers
• These systems are Fault Tolerant, which means either
faults will not occur or if any of their component is
malfunctioning, it will be detected and repaired in time
• Virtualization-Multiple Operating System can run at the
same time to accommodate diverse platforms
• Their speed measured in MIPS (Millions of Instructions
Per Second)
• Mainframe Computers are not Calculation intensive,
mainly focus on handling huge amount of data
IBM z16 Mainframe Computer
Reliability Features that help to avoid and detect faults

A Reliable Machine does not suddenly breaks down

Availability Uptime: Amount of time a device is actually operating as the

percentage of total time it should be operating
It has 100% uptime

Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)-almost null

Serviceability Various methods of easily diagnosing the system when problems arise

Early detection of faults can decrease or avoid system downtime

 Mainframe Computer: Uses

• Used in Census, Industry/ Consumer Statistics, ERP (Enterprise

Resource Planning), Financial Transactions etc.
• Businesses today rely on the mainframe to:
– Perform large-scale transaction processing (thousands of
transactions per second)
– Support thousands of users and application programs
concurrently accessing numerous resources
– Manage terabytes of information in databases
– Handle large-bandwidth communication
 Mini Computers
• Introduced as a cheaper alternative to Mainframe Computers in
mid 60’s as smaller, less expensive, and less powerful than
a mainframe or supercomputer but more expensive and more
powerful than a personal computer.
• Also known as Mid Range Servers, Workstations and Servers
• Term ironically used to small mainframe computers
• In a 1970 survey, The New York Times suggested a consensus
definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than
US$25,000 (equivalent to $174,000 in 2021).
• Mostly used by Medium Scale Organizations
IBM AS/400e server 170/ Dell
PowerEdge Rack Server
 Micro Computers

• A computer with a Single Microprocessor

as its CPU
• Most of the equipment is integrated
within a single case, some equipment may
be connected at short distances
Physically occupy small space
• Also known as personal computers
• General Purpose Systems
 Early Micro Computers
• Datapoint 2200 made by CTC (Computer
Terminal Corporation) in 1970 is considered to
be first microcomputer, although it did not
have any microprocessor
 Early Micro Computers
• Later MITS (Micro Instrumentation and
Telemetry System) introduced Altair in 1974
 Early Micro Computers
• The IBM Personal Computer is the first
microcomputer released in the IBM PC model
line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible
de facto standard.
 Early Micro Computers
• Apple Macintosh system were developed by
Apple Inc.
Desktop Computers Video Game Consoles Laptop Computers

PDA (Personal Digital

Microcontrollers Wearable Computers
Assistant) or Palmtop