Fifth Generation of Computer

 Fifth Generation Computer (1990 - Onwards)

It was thought in early 1990s that a new generation computer will emerge which will have an architecture radically different from Von Neumann architecture. The goal was to have a machine which will allow specification oriented and incorporate artificial intelligence features.

         Fifth Generation of Computer

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 Initiatives were taken in various countries led by Japan and followed by UK, EUROPE, USA, and INDIA.  However, there was no revolutionary architectural change. The major outcome of these efforts was the emergence of a parallel computer architecture using several hundred to thousands of processors.

Meanwhile the relentless increase in the number of transistors which could be placed in a single chip went on. This led to change processor architecture. Primarily the idea was to use several ALUs and on-chip memory to implement instruction level parallelism. In other words, the programmers’ model of a processor did not change but compilers improved to extract as much of parallelism as possible from sequential programs and schedule parallel operations on several ALUs in the chip. Processor architecture called Very large Instruction Word (VLIW) processor with an instruction size 125-126 bits and which can execute several parallel instructions emerged. Intel’s new generation processor called Itanium used this idea. This architecture, however, did not popular and Intel discontinued this.

                                                    Figure of Robots

The other important development was the rapid improvements in communication technology. The combination of computing and communication technologies and increase of bandwidth of networks led to revolutionary changes. An important consequence of this in the emergence of the Internet. A number of computer environments which use several computers connected to the Internet have emerged. Grid computing, Cloud computing and Utility computing are some important development.

Another trend which is significant is mobility which meet user’s demand for any time-any place access to data and processing. This is being met by the emergence of wireless enabled processor chips (e.g., Centrino of Intel) which are used in laptop and hand-held computers.

Mobile devices are battery operated and thus it is important to design microcomputers for these devices whose power consumption is low. A microprocessor family called ARM processors emerged and are widely used. Concurrently, efficient OS for mobile devices emerged. Among them Apple computer’s OS called iOS and Google’s Android are the most significant ones. Microsoft introduced in 2013 Windows 8 OS for mobile devices. The other major trend is the demand for multimedia, allowing users to use simple graphical user interfaces, listen to good quality audio and watch video in their desktop and mobile computers.

 The characteristic Features of the fifth generation computers are as follows:

1. This generation of computer is using the ULSI (ultra large scale integration) technology.
2. The development of natural language processing is growing in the fifth generation.
3. The growth of artificial intelligence increased in the computer of this generation.
4. These computers have advancement in parallel processing.
5. The computer of the fifth-generation has more user-friendly interfaces with multimedia features.
6. These computers are available at a cheaper rate and super speeds.
7. Will be able to do multiple tasks, simultaneously.
8. Will have a parallel structure as compared to the serial structure of fourth
   generation.
9. Will not be algorithmic.
10. Will be knowledge processing and not data processing and architecture will be
    KIPS (Knowledge Information Processing System).
11. Applications will be based on Expert Systems.
12. Will interact with user in human language.
13. Fifth generation computer aims to be able to solve highly complex problem including decision making, logical reasoning.
14. They will be able to use more than one CPU for faster processing speed.
15. They will be able to recognize image and graphs.

Various types of computers exist in this generation, which are given below:

1. Desktop.
2. Laptop.
3. Notebook.
4. Ultra book.
5. Chrome book.

AI includes −

• Robotics
• Neural Networks
• Game Playing
• Development of expert systems to make decisions in real-life situations
• Natural language understanding and generation

 

Advantages of Fifth Generation Computer

1. Fifth generation computers are smaller than the previous generation computers.
2. They are portable and handy.
3. They are more powerful than fourth generation computers.
4. Concept of parallel processing is introduced.
5. Capabilities for solving complex problems.
6. Fifth generation computers are general purpose computers.
7. Their intelligence: Intelligent robots that could ‘see’ their environment (visual input – for example, a video camera) and could be programmed to carry out certain tasks without step-by-step instructions. The robot should be able to decide for itself how the task should be accomplished, based on the observations it made of its environment.

Disadvantages of Fifth Generation of Computer:

1.      They tend to be sophisticated and complex tools.

2.         They can give more power to companies to watch what you are doing and even allow them to infect your computer.