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A human computer, with microscope and calculator, 1952. It was not until the mid-20th century that the word acquired its modern definition; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of the word computer was in a different sense, in a 1613 book called The Yong Mans Gleanings by the English writer Richard Brathwait: "I haue [] read the truest computer of Times, and the best ...
The Ferranti Mark 1, also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer in its sales literature, [1] and thus sometimes called the Manchester Ferranti, was produced by British electrical engineering firm Ferranti Ltd. It was the world's first commercially available electronic general-purpose stored program digital computer. [a]
These computers are capable of handling and processing very large amounts of data quickly. Mainframe computers are used in large institutions such as government, banks, and large corporations. They are measured in MIPS (million instructions per second) and can respond to hundreds of millions of users at a time [citation needed].
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 1 February 2025. Type of extremely powerful computer For other uses, see Supercomputer (disambiguation). The Blue Gene/P supercomputer "Intrepid" at Argonne National Laboratory (pictured 2007) runs 164,000 processor cores using normal data center air conditioning, grouped in 40 racks/cabinets connected ...
Another track of development is to combine reconfigurable logic with a general-purpose CPU. In this scheme, a special computer language compiles fast-running subroutines into a bit-mask to configure the logic. Slower, or less-critical parts of the program can be run by sharing their time on the CPU.
The UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer I) was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer design for business application produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly , the inventors of the ENIAC .
An artist's depiction of a 2000s-era desktop-style personal computer, which includes a metal case with the computing components, a display and a keyboard (mouse not shown). A personal computer, often referred to as a PC or simply computer, is a computer designed for individual use. [1]
Embedded systems and general-purpose computers used x86 chips before the PC-compatible market started, [b] some of them before the IBM PC (1981) debut. As of June 2022, most desktop and laptop computers sold are based on the x86 architecture family, [5] while mobile categories such as smartphones or tablets are dominated by ARM.