ABSTRACT
This chapter summarily demystifies the generation-wise evolution of computer organizations and related architectures from its very primitive form to date describing the salient features of hardware technologies and pioneering concepts with an illustration of representative computer systems of each generation up to supercomputers. It includes the vibrant technological innovations in the area of microprocessors using family concept that have had a profound impact on, and considered as the main driving force for, the formation of computer architecture and design, from the single-chip microprocessor with pipelined and superscalar architecture and the high-capacity RAM chip to the proliferation of multiple-processor architectures and large-scale network of computers, such as computer networks, distributed computing systems, cluster architecture, and special-purpose real-time systems. The relentless improvement in chip fabrication technology eventually gives rise to embedded systems and a spectacular development in CPU (central processing unit) architecture, i.e. the multicore architecture, which consists of multiple CPU (core) within a single-processor chip (chip multiprocessor). Continuous development and rapid advancement in all the areas of hardware and software technologies – including different types of operating systems, namely network operating system, distributed operating system, and real-time operating system – to handle different computing environments are still in progress. This suggests that major advances in computer design will still continue in days to come.
