A Brief History of World Computing Power (Part 2)
Source: Xianzao Classroom
Reference: "Summary of the History of Computer Development", "A Brief History of Computing Power Development", "Who Invented the Mark I Computer?" ", "The pinnacle of mechanical history! Let's take a look at the difference machine", Wikipedia, Baidu Encyclopedia;
---------- A Brief History of Time Computing Power ----------
A Brief History of World Computing Power (Part 1)
A Brief History of World Computing Power (Part 2)
A Brief History of World Computing Power (Part 2)
---------- A Brief History of Time Computing Power ----------
1980-1990: The PC Era
IBM-PC and "Compatibles"
In the previous article, we said that the rise of microprocessors in the 1970s led to the emergence of a large number of personal computers.
This situation has made the traditional giant IBM feel threatened. All along, they have focused on mainframes, leading to neglect of the minicomputer market.
In order to remedy the situation, they also decided to start a personal computer research and development project.
In March 1980, IBM held a high-level secret meeting to set up the "Chess (chess)" project to develop personal computers (the word Personal Computer was proposed by IBM at this time).
In charge of this project, is Don Estridge (Don Estridge) . He led a team of 13 people squatting in a warehouse in Boca Raton, Florida, conducting secret research and development work.
Initially, they planned to use their own processor (IBM 801) and operating system. However, considering the time constraints (leaders requested that it be completed within one year), they decided to cooperate with a third party.
On August 12, 1981, their work came to fruition, and IBM officially launched it IBM-PC（IBM5150）, equipped with Intel's 8088 processor (16-bit, 4.77MHz) and Microsoft's PC-DOS operating system.
The IBM-PC was priced at $1565, had 16K of memory (expandable to 256K if needed), and had a 5.25-inch floppy disk. It has a bus plug-in card designed for expansion capabilities, allowing users to add graphics cards and choose black and white or color displays by themselves.
After the launch of the IBM-PC, it quickly achieved great success. It sold more than 200,000 units in the first year, and more than 1 million units in 1985.
It was not only named "Person of the Year" on the cover of "Time" magazine, but also won the title of "Greatest Product of the 20th Century". (Unfortunately, Don Estridge, the creator of the IBM-PC, died in a plane crash in 1985.)
The success of IBM-PC has attracted many manufacturers to "imitate" it. They refer to the IBM-PC standard to create products that can be "compatible" with IBM-PC supporting software, expansion cards and peripherals, called "compatible machines" (the originator of computer DIY) .
In June 1982, Columbia Data Products introduced the first IBM PC compatible, the MPC 1600. In November, Compaq followed with an IBM PC-compatible portable computer ——Portable (produced in March 1983).
"Compatible machines" are flexible in configuration and cheap in price, and quickly took away the market share of IBM-PC. In 1983, IBM had about 76 percent of the PC market. By 1986, it had fallen to 26%. This frustrates IBM.
The Rise of Intel
The overall rise of PC compatibles, the real beneficiaries are Intel and Microsoft.
The 8088 used by IBM-PC was introduced by Intel in 1979.
In February 1982, Intel produced the second-generation PC processor 80286, which is fully compatible with the 8088, and used it on the IBM PC/AT.
The 8088/80286 chips are all 16-bit processors, which were not technically leading at the time. In 1979, Motorola was the first to launch a 32-bit processor, the MC68000, at least half a generation ahead of Intel.
Apple's Apple Lisa and Macintosh (Macintosh, released in January 1984, is the first personal computer with a graphical interface operating system), use the MC68000.
Until July 1985, Intel finally launched its own long overdue 32-bit processor-80386.
This processor catered to the needs of compatible machines and was a huge success.
It is worth mentioning that IBM was relatively strong in the early days. When they developed IBM-PC, they chose Intel chips and forced Intel to open the design and code to AMD, making AMD the second supplier.
Later, there were more and more compatible machines, all of which used Intel chips, and it became Intel who had the right to speak. Therefore, starting from 80386, Intel will no longer open any information to AMD.
In 1987, AMD sued Intel in a lawsuit on the grounds of breach of contract, and Intel immediately countersued. The monopoly and infringement lawsuits between the two have been fought for 8 years.
Although AMD won the lawsuit in the end, it missed the golden age of CPU development and was left behind by Intel.
In the mid-1980s, the rise of Japanese semiconductors also brought great threats to American companies such as Intel.
Later, the legendary CEO Andy Grove (Andy Grove) took the helm of Intel, cut off the storage semiconductor business, and focused on the microprocessor business, which saved Intel back.
In 1989, Intel launched it 80486处理器, which was welcomed by the market.
With the outstanding performance of 80486, Intel's performance surpassed all Japanese semiconductor companies and became the world's number one semiconductor manufacturer.
Microsoft DOS/Windows
Look at Microsoft again.
The DOS developed by Microsoft for IBM-PC was a "second-hand product" bought by itself.
In 1976, DR Company in the United States successfully developed an operating system called CP/M (Control Program/Monitor, Control Program/Monitor), which is specially used for microcomputers equipped with Intel 8080 chips (including Altair 8800).
IBM originally wanted to use this system, but it didn't work out.
Later, SCP (Seattle Computer Products) had a programmer named Tim Paterson (Tim Paterson) write a QDOS system (Quick and Dirty Operating System, quick and dirty operating system, later renamed 86 -DOS), is a variant of the CP/M system.
Bill Gates had a good vision, bought out the system (and poached Tim Patterson), changed it, turned it into PC-DOS, and sold it to IBM.
After the IBM-PC became popular, Microsoft's DOS became famous. Then, Microsoft continued to update and released many new versions.
After Apple's Macintosh launched a graphical interface operating system, it shocked Bill Gates a lot. Thus, a "reference" was made, and Windows 1.0 was launched in November 1985 .
The early Windows was just the "shell" of DOS, which was not useful, so it was complained by users. As a result, Microsoft began the development of a new kernel, which later became Windows NT.
Microsoft actually worked with IBM to develop an OS/2 operating system, but later put IBM together and gave up.
In the 1980s, because of the popularity of PC compatibles, a huge IT market was created. Many new companies were established and many new products were launched.
For example, in September 1982, 3Com launched the world's first network card. In 1984, the British company AdlibAudio launched the first sound card - magic sound card. In 1985, Philips and Sony collaborated to launch the CD-ROM drive . ...
These hardware products make PCs more powerful and bring users a better experience.
1990-2000: The Internet Era
Wintel Alliance
After entering the 1990s, Intel and Microsoft have become real giants, with a market value of more than 100 billion US dollars.
Intel's Pentium line of x86 processors, along with Microsoft's Windows operating system, are standard on all PCs. The Wintel Alliance formed by them firmly holds the initiative in the PC market.
In the world of workstations and servers, Intel and Microsoft face a bit of a complicated situation.
When it comes to processors, the industry is extremely competitive. At that time, there were mainly two camps.
One is the RISC-CPU camp represented by manufacturers such as SUN, SGI, IBM, DEC, HP, and Motorola. They advocated a RISC-CPU architecture (RISC, Simple Instruction Computer).
The other is the CISC-CPU camp represented by Intel and AMD. They advocate the CISC-CPU architecture (CISC, Complex Instruction Computer).
Although RISC was faster and was more favored by the industry at the time, Intel under the leadership of Andy Grove still insisted on taking CISC-CPU as its main direction.
In the end, Intel defeated other competitors and successfully consolidated its position by virtue of its huge R&D investment, as well as its advantages in compatibility and mass production speed. (However, Intel should not have imagined that after a few years, they still stumbled on RISC.)
On the operating system side, Microsoft's competitor is the powerful UNIX/Linux camp.
UNIX, and later Linux and its distributions (such as Ubuntu, Debian, Centos, Fedora, Redhat Linux), are the mainstream choices for server operating systems .
Although Windows also launched Windows NT, but because the stability is not as good as Unix/Linux, there is no advantage in market share.
Informatization
With the help of the Pentium processor, the performance of the PC has been greatly improved. The continuous improvement of Windows has also given ordinary people the ability to operate computers.
In the 1990s, due to the rapid iteration of semiconductor technology, storage technology became more and more mature. The capacity of memory and hard disk is getting bigger and bigger, and flash memory and various memory cards are also beginning to appear, making the copying and saving of media more convenient.
If we say that PCs in the 1980s were just early adopters for users. Well, the PC in the 90s is already a real productivity tool.
People not only use PCs to listen to music, watch videos, and play games, but also use them to edit documents, create tables, and process data.
With the help of PCs, people can fully feel the improvement of the quality of life brought about by IT computing power and the improvement of production efficiency.
The informatization process of the entire human society has begun to accelerate.
internet explosion
Adding fire to informatization is, of course, the Internet.
After continuous expansion and expansion in the 1980s, ARPANET finally evolved into the Internet covering the whole world.
On August 6, 1991, British physicist Tim Berners-Lee (Tim Berners-Lee) officially proposed the World Wide Web, which is the www World Wide Web that we are very familiar with today .
He also proposed HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), designed the first web browser, and built the world's first web site.
The emergence of the Internet has opened the door to a new world for people. The Internet is a treasure trove with unlimited resources, and various websites and forums are dazzling. The powerful instant messaging tool also meets people's communication and social needs.
The Internet has gone beyond technology. It builds an online virtual world, derives many new business models, and completely changes human society.
The vigorous development of the Internet has given birth to many Internet companies.
These companies purchased a large number of servers and built computer rooms to provide services to users. For example, email service, audio and video download service, web page access service, etc.
The development direction of information technology began to change. A new computing power service model is gradually coming to us.
2000-Present: The Era of Cloud Computing
cloud computing
After the rise of the Internet, the rapid growth of users and the tidal characteristics of business (sometimes with many people, sometimes with few people), have brought great pressure to service providers.
How to meet user needs more flexibly at a lower cost has become a difficult problem for many companies to think about.
In the mid-1990s, someone proposed the idea of "cloud computing".
In 1996, a group of technology executives at Compaq Corporation first used the term Cloud Computing when discussing the evolution of the computing business. They believe that commercial computing will shift to the direction of Cloud Computing.
After entering the 21st century, the idea has gradually become a reality.
In 2006, the Internet e-commerce company Amazon (Amazon) took the lead in launching two heavyweight products, namely S3 (Simple Storage Service, simple storage service) and EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computer, elastic cloud computing), thus establishing its own cloud computing service Cornerstone.
Another company making moves in cloud computing is Google (Google).
This young company, which was born in 1998, published four important articles in a row from 2003 to 2006, respectively about distributed file system (GFS), parallel computing (MapReduce), data management (Big Table) and distribution resource management (Chubby).
These articles not only laid the foundation for Google's own cloud computing services, but also pointed out the direction for the development of cloud computing and big data around the world.
In 2006, Google engineer Christophe Bisciglia first proposed the idea of "cloud computing" to Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt.
On August 9, Schmidt officially proposed "Cloud Computing" at the Search Engine Conference.
The essence of cloud computing is to turn scattered physical computing power resources into flexible virtual computing power resources, and cooperate with distributed architecture to provide theoretically unlimited computing power services.
Hashrate trend
Since 2010, there have been two significant trends in the development of computing power.
One, ubiquitous .
In the 1990s, 2G mobile communications became popular, allowing many users to use mobile phones. At that time, devices such as PDAs and handheld computers also became popular.
The functions of this type of equipment are relatively simple, and the chips used do not require high performance, but they are very concerned about energy consumption.
This gave a company called ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) an opportunity. They hold high the banner of RISC, and specialize in the road of low power consumption and low cost, which just caters to the chip needs of mobile terminals.
Mr. Xiaozao told everyone before that Intel is engaged in CISC, and it has killed several major manufacturers engaged in RISC in the server market. At that time, they looked down on ARM at all, and felt that RISC had no future. As a result, tigers became infested.
In 2008, Jobs' Apple launched the iPhone, bringing mobile phones into the smart age.
Mobile terminals such as mobile phones and pads have completely exploded, and ARM company and its ARM architecture chips have also completely exploded, becoming the big winner in the mobile Internet era.
The capabilities of mobile terminal chips are getting stronger and stronger, not losing to desktop terminal chips. People are paying more attention to terminal chips than PC chips.
The development of 3G/4G/5G mobile communications and fiber optic broadband has built a powerful network and created conditions for the "mobility" of computing power.
Today, computing power no longer only stays in the cloud, but can sink to the edge, resulting in a three-tier architecture of "cloud computing-edge (edge computing)-end computing". Operators also proposed a computing power network, hoping to realize the comprehensive ubiquity of computing power.
Second, segmentation .
Informatization and networking have given people a taste of the sweetness. Today, technology is constantly upgrading, and we have begun to propose a digital economy and digital transformation. To put it bluntly, all industries must realize digitalization.
Each industry has different needs for computing power. As a result, computing power gradually began to be subdivided into general computing power, super computing power, and intelligent computing power.
Different computing power requirements also lead to different forms of computing power chips. From the original single CPU computing, it has gradually evolved into a pattern of "general-purpose computing chips + special-purpose computing chips".
In addition to traditional CPUs and GPUs, computing power units such as NPUs and DPUs have begun to appear and have become the focus of public attention.
In terms of high-performance computing, computing power clusters have become the new darling of supercomputing and smart computing. The AIGC large model that will rise in an all-round way in 2023 will give a shot in the arm to the development of computing power.
Computing power chips like GPU are stronger than CPUs in terms of artificial intelligence calculations. Nowadays, high-end GPUs are hard to come by.
Twenty years ago, no one would have thought that the market value of Nvidia, a graphics card company (GPU), would be eight times that of Intel, a CPU company.
epilogue
At this point, the series of brief history of computing power is coming to an end.
The development of human computing power is really a magnificent technological epic.
It has been thousands of years of long exploration from the earliest knotting and keeping records, to abacus calculation, and then to mechanical computers.
After the emergence of electronic computers, it took less than a hundred years to increase the computing power by a factor of one million billion.
In the past forty years, the wave of information technology revolution has swept every corner of our lives. Driven by computing power, the entire human society has undergone earth-shaking changes.
In the future, digitization and intelligence will continue to move forward. Our demand for computing power is still growing wildly.
Under the premise that Moore's Law is gradually approaching the bottleneck, how can we achieve the doubling of computing power? Will the new computing power represented by quantum computing rise in an all-round way?
Let time tell us the answer!