FIFTH GENERATION COMPUTER

FIFTH GENERATION COMPUTER (1984 – ………)

The development of the fifth generation of computer systems is characterized mainly by the acceptance of parallel processing. Until this time parallelism was limited to pipe lining and vector processing, or at most a few processors sharing jobs. The fifth generation was the introductions of machines with hundreds of processors that could all be working on different parts of a single program. The scale of integration in semiconductors continued at an incredible pace-by 1990 it was possible to build chips with a million components and semiconductor memories became standard on all computers. A multimedia PC specification setting the minimum hardware requirements for a PC was announced by Microsoft.

FIFTH GENERATION COMPUTER

Other new developments were the widespread use of computer net works and the increasing use of single user workstations. Prior to 1985 large scale parallel processing was viewed as a research goal, but two systems introduced around this time are typical of the first commercial products to be based on parallel processing. The sequent Balance 8000 connected up to 20 processors to a single shared memory module. The machine was designed to compete with the DEC VAX- 780 as a general purpose UNIX system, with each processor working on a different user's job. However Sequent provided a library of subroutines that would allow programmers to write programs that would use more than one processor, and the machine was widely used to explore parallel algorithms and programming techniques.