ABSTRACT
Semiconductor technology has played its most important role in the development of computers; the history of the development of computer technology since the Second World War is conventionally divided into five generations. The first-generation computers of the late 1940s and early 1950s depended on thousands of thermionic valves or vacuum tubes which were huge, expensive and very liable to malfunction. Second-generation computers were made possible by the invention of the transistor on 23 December 1947, the first small solid-state semiconductor. Third-generation computers resulted from the development of integrated circuitry in a single manufacturing process. The fourth-generation of computer technology can be identified with the development, in the late 1970s, of very large-scale integration, in which hundreds of thousands of transistors are embedded on a single silicon chip. A further development in computer technology is the projected fifth-generation computer. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
