A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences

of arithmetic or logical operations (computation). Modern digital electronic

computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs, which enable
computers to perform a wide range of tasks. The term computer system may refer to a
nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system, software,
and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation; or to a group of
computers that are linked and function together, such as a computer network or
computer cluster.

A broad range of industrial and consumer products use computers as control systems,
including simple special-purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls,
and factory devices like industrial robots. Computers are at the core of general-
purpose devices such as personal computers and mobile devices such as smartphones.
Computers power the Internet, which links billions of computers and users.

Early computers were meant to be used only for calculations. Simple manual
instruments like the abacus have aided people in doing calculations since ancient
times. Early in the Industrial Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to
automate long, tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms. More
sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in the early
20th century. The first digital electronic calculating machines were developed
during World War II, both electromechanical and using thermionic valves. The first
semiconductor transistors in the late 1940s were followed by the silicon-based
MOSFET (MOS transistor) and monolithic integrated circuit chip technologies in the
late 1950s, leading to the microprocessor and the microcomputer revolution in the
1970s. The speed, power, and versatility of computers have been increasing
dramatically ever since then, with transistor counts increasing at a rapid pace
(Moore's law noted that counts doubled every two years), leading to the Digital
Revolution during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element,

typically a central processing unit (CPU) in the form of a microprocessor, together
with some type of computer memory, typically semiconductor memory chips. The
processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing
and control unit can change the order of operations in response to stored
information. Peripheral devices include input devices (keyboards, mice, joysticks,
etc.), output devices (monitors, printers, etc.), and input/output devices that
perform both functions (e.g. touchscreens). Peripheral devices allow information to
be retrieved from an external source, and they enable the results of operations to
be saved and retrieved.

Etymology
A human computer.
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 [sic] read the truest computer of
Times, and the best Arithmetician that euer [sic] breathed, and he reduceth thy
dayes into a short number." This usage of the term referred to a human computer, a
person who carried out calculations or computations. The word continued to have the
same meaning until the middle of the 20th century. During the latter part of this
period, women were often hired as computers because they could be paid less than
their male counterparts.[1] By 1943, most human computers were women.[2]

The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the first attested use of computer in the
1640s, meaning 'one who calculates'; this is an "agent noun from compute (v.)". The
Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean "'calculating
machine' (of any type) is from 1897." The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates
that the "modern use" of the term, to mean 'programmable digital electronic
computer' dates from "1945 under this name; [in a] theoretical [sense] from 1937,
as Turing machine".[3] The name has remained, although modern computers are capable
of many higher-level functions.

History
Main articles: History of computing and History of computing hardware
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of computing.
Pre-20th century

The Ishango bone, a bone tool dating back to prehistoric Africa

Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-
to-one correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was most likely a
form of tally stick. Later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent
included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items,
likely livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers.[a][4] The use
of counting rods is one example.

The Chinese suanpan (算盘). The number represented on this abacus is 6,302,715,408.
The abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed
from devices used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BCE. Since then, many other forms
of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting
house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it
according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money.[5]

The Antikythera mechanism, dating back to ancient Greece circa 200–80 BCE, is an
early analog computing device.
The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest known mechanical analog
computer, according to Derek J. de Solla Price.[6] It was designed to calculate
astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the
Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to
approximately c. 100 BCE. Devices of comparable complexity to the Antikythera
mechanism would not reappear until the fourteenth century.[7]

Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for

astronomical and navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Abū
Rayhān al-Bīrūnī in the early 11th century.[8] The astrolabe was invented in the
Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd centuries BCE and is often attributed to
Hipparchus. A combination of the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was
effectively an analog computer capable of working out several different kinds of
problems in spherical astronomy. An astrolabe incorporating a mechanical calendar
computer[9][10] and gear-wheels was invented by Abi Bakr of Isfahan, Persia in
1235.[11] Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī invented the first mechanical geared lunisolar
calendar astrolabe,[12] an early fixed-wired knowledge processing machine[13] with
a gear train and gear-wheels,[14] c. 1000 AD.

The sector, a calculating instrument used for solving problems in proportion,

trigonometry, multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as
squares and cube roots, was developed in the late 16th century and found
application in gunnery, surveying and navigation.

The planimeter was a manual instrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by
tracing over it with a mechanical linkage.

A slide rule
The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630, by the English clergyman William
Oughtred, shortly after the publication of the concept of the logarithm. It is a
hand-operated analog computer for doing multiplication and division. As slide rule
development progressed, added scales provided reciprocals, squares and square
roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as logarithms
and exponentials, circular and hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions. Slide
rules with special scales are still used for quick performance of routine
calculations, such as the E6B circular slide rule used for time and distance
calculations on light aircraft.

In the 1770s, Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, built a mechanical doll

(automaton) that could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order
of its internal wheels different letters, and hence different messages, could be
produced. In effect, it could be mechanically "programmed" to read instructions.
Along with two other complex machines, the doll is at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire
of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and still operates.[15]

In 1831–1835, mathematician and engineer Giovanni Plana devised a Perpetual

Calendar machine, which through a system of pulleys and cylinders could predict the
perpetual calendar for every year from 0 CE (that is, 1 BCE) to 4000 CE, keeping
track of leap years and varying day length. The tide-predicting machine invented by
the Scottish scientist Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to
navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to
automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular
location.

The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve

differential equations by integration, used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform
the integration. In 1876, Sir William Thomson had already discussed the possible
construction of such calculators, but he had been stymied by the limited output
torque of the ball-and-disk integrators.[16] In a differential analyzer, the output
of one integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a graphing output. The
torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work. Starting in
the 1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers.

In the 1890s, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo began to develop a
series of advanced analog machines that could solve real and complex roots of
polynomials,[17][18][19][20] which were published in 1901 by the Paris Academy of
Sciences.[21]

First computer

Charles Babbage

A diagram of a portion of Babbage's Difference engine

The Difference Engine Number 2 at the Intellectual Ventures laboratory in Seattle

Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and polymath, originated the
concept of a programmable computer. Considered the "father of the computer",[22] he
conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th
century.

After working on his difference engine he announced his invention in 1822, in a

paper to the Royal Astronomical Society, titled "Note on the application of
machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables".[23] He also
designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that a much more
general design, an analytical engine, was possible. The input of programs and data
was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the
time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine
would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to
punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The engine would incorporate an
arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops,
and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer
that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.[24][25]

The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine
had to be made by hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of
parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British
Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine
can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as his
desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster
than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a
simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He
gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906.

Electromechanical calculating machine

Electro-mechanical calculator (1920) by Leonardo Torres Quevedo.

In his work Essays on Automatics published in 1914, Leonardo Torres Quevedo wrote a
brief history of Babbage's efforts at constructing a mechanical Difference Engine
and Analytical Engine. The paper contains a design of a machine capable to
calculate formulas like
a
x
(
y
−
z
)
2
{\displaystyle a^{x}(y-z)^{2}}, for a sequence of sets of values. The whole machine
was to be controlled by a read-only program, which was complete with provisions for
conditional branching. He also introduced the idea of floating-point arithmetic.
[26][27][28] In 1920, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the
arithmometer, Torres presented in Paris the Electromechanical Arithmometer, which
allowed a user to input arithmetic problems through a keyboard, and computed and
printed the results,[29][30][31][32] demonstrating the feasibility of an
electromechanical analytical engine.[33]

Analog computers
Main article: Analog computer

Sir William Thomson's third tide-predicting machine design, 1879–81

During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met
by increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or
electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not
programmable and generally lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital
computers.[34] The first modern analog computer was a tide-predicting machine,
invented by Sir William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin) in 1872. The
differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential
equations by integration using wheel-and-disc mechanisms, was conceptualized in
1876 by James Thomson, the elder brother of the more famous Sir William Thomson.
[16]

The art of mechanical analog computing reached its zenith with the differential
analyzer, completed in 1931 by Vannevar Bush at MIT.[35] By the 1950s, the success
of digital electronic computers had spelled the end for most analog computing
machines, but analog computers remained in use during the 1950s in some specialized
applications such as education (slide rule) and aircraft (control systems).
[citation needed]

Digital computers
Electromechanical
Claude Shannon's 1937 master's thesis laid the foundations of digital computing,
with his insight of applying Boolean algebra to the analysis and synthesis of
switching circuits being the basic concept which underlies all electronic digital
computers.[36][37]

By 1938, the United States Navy had developed the Torpedo Data Computer, an
electromechanical analog computer for submarines that used trigonometry to solve
the problem of firing a torpedo at a moving target. During World War II, similar
devices were developed in other countries.[38]

Replica of Konrad Zuse's Z3, the first fully automatic, digital (electromechanical)
computer
Early digital computers were electromechanical; electric switches drove mechanical
relays to perform the calculation. These devices had a low operating speed and were
eventually superseded by much faster all-electric computers, originally using
vacuum tubes. The Z2, created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1939 in Berlin, was
one of the earliest examples of an electromechanical relay computer.[39]

Konrad Zuse, inventor of the modern computer[40][41]

In 1941, Zuse followed his earlier machine up with the Z3, the world's first
working electromechanical programmable, fully automatic digital computer.[42][43]
The Z3 was built with 2000 relays, implementing a 22 bit word length that operated
at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz.[44] Program code was supplied on punched
film while data could be stored in 64 words of memory or supplied from the
keyboard. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering
numerous advances such as floating-point numbers. Rather than the harder-to-
implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage's earlier design), using a binary
system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more
reliable, given the technologies available at that time.[45] The Z3 was not itself
a universal computer but could be extended to be Turing complete.[46][47]

Zuse's next computer, the Z4, became the world's first commercial computer; after
initial delay due to the Second World War, it was completed in 1950 and delivered
to the ETH Zurich.[48] The computer was manufactured by Zuse's own company, Zuse
KG, which was founded in 1941 as the first company with the sole purpose of
developing computers in Berlin.[48] The Z4 served as the inspiration for the
construction of the ERMETH, the first Swiss computer and one of the first in
Europe.[49]

Vacuum tubes and digital electronic circuits

Purely electronic circuit elements soon replaced their mechanical and
electromechanical equivalents, at the same time that digital calculation replaced
analog. The engineer Tommy Flowers, working at the Post Office Research Station in
London in the 1930s, began to explore the possible use of electronics for the
telephone exchange. Experimental equipment that he built in 1934 went into
operation five years later, converting a portion of the telephone exchange network
into an electronic data processing system, using thousands of vacuum tubes.[34] In
the US, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University
developed and tested the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) in 1942,[50] the first
"automatic electronic digital computer".[51] This design was also all-electronic
and used about 300 vacuum tubes, with capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating
drum for memory.[52]
Two women are seen by the Colossus computer.
Colossus, the first electronic digital programmable computing device, was used to
break German ciphers during World War II. It is seen here in use at Bletchley Park
in 1943.
During World War II, the British code-breakers at Bletchley Park achieved a number
of successes at breaking encrypted German military communications. The German
encryption machine, Enigma, was first attacked with the help of the electro-
mechanical bombes which were often run by women.[53][54] To crack the more
sophisticated German Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine, used for high-level Army
communications, Max Newman and his colleagues commissioned Flowers to build the
Colossus.[52] He spent eleven months from early February 1943 designing and
building the first Colossus.[55] After a functional test in December 1943, Colossus
was shipped to Bletchley Park, where it was delivered on 18 January 1944[56] and
attacked its first message on 5 February.[52]

Colossus was the world's first electronic digital programmable computer.[34] It

used a large number of valves (vacuum tubes). It had paper-tape input and was
capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on
its data, but it was not Turing-complete. Nine Mk II Colossi were built (The Mk I
was converted to a Mk II making ten machines in total). Colossus Mark I contained
1,500 thermionic valves (tubes), but Mark II with 2,400 valves, was both five times
faster and simpler to operate than Mark I, greatly speeding the decoding process.
[57][58]

ENIAC was the first electronic, Turing-complete device, and performed ballistics
trajectory calculations for the United States Army.
The ENIAC[59] (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first
electronic programmable computer built in the U.S. Although the ENIAC was similar
to the Colossus, it was much faster, more flexible, and it was Turing-complete.
Like the Colossus, a "program" on the ENIAC was defined by the states of its patch
cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that
came later. Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the
machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches. The programmers of the ENIAC
were six women, often known collectively as the "ENIAC girls".[60][61]

It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for
many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand
times faster than any other machine. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and
square root. High speed memory was limited to 20 words (about 80 bytes). Built
under the direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of
Pennsylvania, ENIAC's development and construction lasted from 1943 to full
operation at the end of 1945. The machine was huge, weighing 30 tons, using 200
kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays,
and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors.[62]

Modern computers
Concept of modern computer
The principle of the modern computer was proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal
1936 paper,[63] On Computable Numbers. Turing proposed a simple device that he
called "Universal Computing machine" and that is now known as a universal Turing
machine. He proved that such a machine is capable of computing anything that is
computable by executing instructions (program) stored on tape, allowing the machine
to be programmable. The fundamental concept of Turing's design is the stored
program, where all the instructions for computing are stored in memory. Von Neumann
acknowledged that the central concept of the modern computer was due to this paper.
[64] Turing machines are to this day a central object of study in theory of
computation. Except for the limitations imposed by their finite memory stores,
modern computers are said to be Turing-complete, which is to say, they have
algorithm execution capability equivalent to a universal Turing machine.

Stored programs
Main article: Stored-program computer
Three tall racks containing electronic circuit boards
A section of the reconstructed Manchester Baby, the first electronic stored-program
computer
Early computing machines had fixed programs. Changing its function required the re-
wiring and re-structuring of the machine.[52] With the proposal of the stored-
program computer this changed. A stored-program computer includes by design an
instruction set and can store in memory a set of instructions (a program) that
details the computation. The theoretical basis for the stored-program computer was
laid out by Alan Turing in his 1936 paper. In 1945, Turing joined the National
Physical Laboratory and began work on developing an electronic stored-program
digital computer. His 1945 report "Proposed Electronic Calculator" was the first
specification for such a device. John von Neumann at the University of Pennsylvania
also circulated his First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC in 1945.[34]

The Manchester Baby was the world's first stored-program computer. It was built at
the University of Manchester in England by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and
Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948.[65] It was designed as a
testbed for the Williams tube, the first random-access digital storage device.[66]
Although the computer was described as "small and primitive" by a 1998
retrospective, it was the first working machine to contain all of the elements
essential to a modern electronic computer.[67] As soon as the Baby had demonstrated
the feasibility of its design, a project began at the university to develop it into
a practically useful computer, the Manchester Mark 1.

The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1, the
world's first commercially available general-purpose computer.[68] Built by
Ferranti, it was delivered to the University of Manchester in February 1951. At
least seven of these later machines were delivered between 1953 and 1957, one of
them to Shell labs in Amsterdam.[69] In October 1947 the directors of British
catering company J. Lyons & Company decided to take an active role in promoting the
commercial development of computers. Lyons's LEO I computer, modelled closely on
the Cambridge EDSAC of 1949, became operational in April 1951[70] and ran the
world's first routine office computer job.

Transistors
Main articles: Transistor and History of the transistor
Further information: Transistor computer and MOSFET

Bipolar junction transistor (BJT)

The concept of a field-effect transistor was proposed by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in
1925. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, while working under William Shockley at
Bell Labs, built the first working transistor, the point-contact transistor, in
1947, which was followed by Shockley's bipolar junction transistor in 1948.[71][72]
From 1955 onwards, transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computer designs, giving
rise to the "second generation" of computers. Compared to vacuum tubes, transistors
have many advantages: they are smaller, and require less power than vacuum tubes,
so give off less heat. Junction transistors were much more reliable than vacuum
tubes and had longer, indefinite, service life. Transistorized computers could
contain tens of thousands of binary logic circuits in a relatively compact space.
However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were
difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number
of specialized applications.[73]

At the University of Manchester, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn

designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of
valves.[74] Their first transistorized computer and the first in the world, was
operational by 1953, and a second version was completed there in April 1955.
However, the machine did make use of valves to generate its 125 kHz clock waveforms
and in the circuitry to read and write on its magnetic drum memory, so it was not
the first completely transistorized computer. That distinction goes to the Harwell
CADET of 1955,[75] built by the electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research
Establishment at Harwell.[75][76]

MOSFET (MOS transistor), showing gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D)
terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistor (MOSFET), also known as the MOS
transistor, was invented at Bell Labs between 1955 and 1960[77][78][79][80][81][82]
and was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturized and mass-
produced for a wide range of uses.[73] With its high scalability,[83] and much
lower power consumption and higher density than bipolar junction transistors,[84]
the MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuits.[85][86] In
addition to data processing, it also enabled the practical use of MOS transistors
as memory cell storage elements, leading to the development of MOS semiconductor
memory, which replaced earlier magnetic-core memory in computers. The MOSFET led to
the microcomputer revolution,[87] and became the driving force behind the computer
revolution.[88][89] The MOSFET is the most widely used transistor in computers,[90]
[91] and is the fundamental building block of digital electronics.[92]

Integrated circuits
Main articles: Integrated circuit and Invention of the integrated circuit
Further information: Planar process and Microprocessor

Integrated circuits are typically packaged in plastic, metal, or ceramic cases to

protect the IC from damage and for ease of assembly.
The next great advance in computing power came with the advent of the integrated
circuit (IC). The idea of the integrated circuit was first conceived by a radar
scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment of the Ministry of Defence,
Geoffrey W.A. Dummer. Dummer presented the first public description of an
integrated circuit at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in
Washington, D.C., on 7 May 1952.[93]

The first working ICs were invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert
Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor.[94] Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning
the integrated circuit in July 1958, successfully demonstrating the first working
integrated example on 12 September 1958.[95] In his patent application of 6
February 1959, Kilby described his new device as "a body of semiconductor
material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are completely
integrated".[96][97] However, Kilby's invention was a hybrid integrated circuit
(hybrid IC), rather than a monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip.[98] Kilby's IC
had external wire connections, which made it difficult to mass-produce.[99]

Noyce also came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year later
than Kilby.[100] Noyce's invention was the first true monolithic IC chip.[101][99]
His chip solved many practical problems that Kilby's had not. Produced at Fairchild
Semiconductor, it was made of silicon, whereas Kilby's chip was made of germanium.
Noyce's monolithic IC was fabricated using the planar process, developed by his
colleague Jean Hoerni in early 1959. In turn, the planar process was based on Carl
Frosch and Lincoln Derick work on semiconductor surface passivation by silicon
dioxide.[102][103][104][105][106][107]

Modern monolithic ICs are predominantly MOS (metal–oxide–semiconductor) integrated

circuits, built from MOSFETs (MOS transistors).[108] The earliest experimental MOS
IC to be fabricated was a 16-transistor chip built by Fred Heiman and Steven
Hofstein at RCA in 1962.[109] General Microelectronics later introduced the first
commercial MOS IC in 1964,[110] developed by Robert Norman.[109] Following the
development of the self-aligned gate (silicon-gate) MOS transistor by Robert
Kerwin, Donald Klein and John Sarace at Bell Labs in 1967, the first silicon-gate
MOS IC with self-aligned gates was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild
Semiconductor in 1968.[111] The MOSFET has since become the most critical device
component in modern ICs.[108]

Die photograph of a MOS 6502, an early 1970s microprocessor integrating 3500

transistors on a single chip
The development of the MOS integrated circuit led to the invention of the
microprocessor,[112][113] and heralded an explosion in the commercial and personal
use of computers. While the subject of exactly which device was the first
microprocessor is contentious, partly due to lack of agreement on the exact
definition of the term "microprocessor", it is largely undisputed that the first
single-chip microprocessor was the Intel 4004,[114] designed and realized by
Federico Faggin with his silicon-gate MOS IC technology,[112] along with Ted Hoff,
Masatoshi Shima and Stanley Mazor at Intel.[b][116] In the early 1970s, MOS IC
technology enabled the integration of more than 10,000 transistors on a single
chip.[86]

System on a Chip (SoCs) are complete computers on a microchip (or chip) the size of
a coin.[117] They may or may not have integrated RAM and flash memory. If not
integrated, the RAM is usually placed directly above (known as Package on package)
or below (on the opposite side of the circuit board) the SoC, and the flash memory
is usually placed right next to the SoC. This is done to improve data transfer
speeds, as the data signals do not have to travel long distances. Since ENIAC in
1945, computers have advanced enormously, with modern SoCs (such as the Snapdragon
865) being the size of a coin while also being hundreds of thousands of times more
powerful than ENIAC, integrating billions of transistors, and consuming only a few
watts of power.

Mobile computers
The first mobile computers were heavy and ran from mains power. The 50 lb (23 kg)
IBM 5100 was an early example. Later portables such as the Osborne 1 and Compaq
Portable were considerably lighter but still needed to be plugged in. The first
laptops, such as the Grid Compass, removed this requirement by incorporating
batteries – and with the continued miniaturization of computing resources and
advancements in portable battery life, portable computers grew in popularity in the
2000s.[118] The same developments allowed manufacturers to integrate computing
resources into cellular mobile phones by the early 2000s.

These smartphones and tablets run on a variety of operating systems and recently
became the dominant computing device on the market.[119] These are powered by
System on a Chip (SoCs), which are complete computers on a microchip the size of a
coin.[117]