HRM 3450 Lecture Notes - Lecture 34: Vacuum Tube, Intel 8008, Edvac
5 May 2018
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HRM 3450 Lecture 34 Notes – Prevalent Standard
Introduction
• It remains the prevalent standard to this day and provides the foundation for the
remainder of the material
• Although there have been significant advances in technology, and improvements in
desig that hae esulted, todays desigs still eflet the ok doe pio to 1951 o
ABC, ENIAC, EDVAC, and IAS.
• All of these early electronic computers relied on the electronic vacuum tube for their
operation.
• Vacuum tubes were bulky, made of glass, fragile, short-lived, and required large
amounts of power to operate.
• Vacuum tubes require an internal electric heater to function, and the heaters tend to
fail quickly, resultig i hat as ko as a ued out tue.
• Furthermore, the heat generated by the large number of tubes used in a computer
required a massive forced-air or water-cooling system.
• A report reprinted by computer historian James Cortada [CORT87] states that the
average error-free operating time for ENIAC was only 5.6 hours.
• Such bulky, maintenance-requiring systems could not have attained the prevalence that
computers have in our society.
• The tehologial eakthough that ade possile todays sall, sophisticated
computers was the invention of the transistor and, subsequently, the integration of
transistors and other electronic components with the development of the integrated
circuit.
• The invention of the integrated circuit led to smaller, faster, more powerful computers
as well as a new, compact, inexpensive form of memory, RAM.
• Although ay of these oputes played a ipotat ole i the eolutio of todays
computers, two specific developments stand out from the rest
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