puter and communications industry shown in Figure 1 behave generally as follows:

• Computers are born—classes come into existence through intense, competitive, entrepreneurial action over a period of two to three years to occupy a price range, through the confluence of new hardware, programming environments, networks, interfaces, applications, and distribution channels. During the formation period, two to hundreds of companies compete to establish a market position. After this formative and rapid growth period, two or three, or a dozen primary companies remain as a class reaches maturity depending on the class volume.

• A computer class, determined by a unique price range, evolves in functionality and gradually expanding price range of 10 maintains a stable market. This is followed by a similar lower-priced sub-class that expands the p range another factor of five ^r to 10. Evolution is similar ⁱ to Newton’s First Law ^c

(bodies maintain their motion and direction unless acted on externally).

For example, the “ mainframe” class was established in the early 1950s using vacuum tube technology by Univac and IBM and functionally bifurcated into commercial and scientific applications. Constant price evolution follows directly from Moore’s Law whereby a given collection of chips provide more transistors and hence more performance.

A lower entry price, similar characteristics sub-class often follows to increase the class’s price range by another factor of five to 10, attracting more usage and extending the market. For example, smaller “mainframes” existed within five years after the first larger computers as sub-classes.

• CMOS semiconductor density and packaging inherently enable performance increase to support a trajectory of increasing price and function.

Moore’s Law single-chip evolution, or microprocessor computer evolution after 1971 enabled new, higher performing and more expensive classes. The initial introduction of the microprocessor at a substantially lower cost accounted for formation of the initial microcomputer that was programmed to be a calculator. This was followed by more powerful, more expensive classes forming including the home computer, PC, workstation, the shared microcomputer, and eventually every higher class. Home and personal computers are differentiated

from workstations simply on “buyer”—a person versus an organization.

The supercomputer class circa 1960 was established as the highest performance computer of the day. However, since the mid-1990s supercomputers are created by combining the largest number of high-performance microprocessor-based computers to form a single, clustered computer system in a single facility. In 2010, over a million processors will likely constitute a cluster. Geographically coupled computers including GRID computing, such as SETI@home, are outside the scope.

• Approximately every decade a new computer class
forms as a new “minimal” computer either through
using fewer components or use of a small fractional
part of the state-of-the-art chips. For example, the
hundredfold increase in component density per
decade enables
smaller chips, disks,
and screens at the
same functionality of
the previous decade
especially since pow-
erful microprocessor
cores (for example,
the ARM) use only a
few (less than
100,000) transistors
versus over a billion
for the largest Ita-
nium derivatives.
Building the smallest possible computer
accounts for the creation of computers that were
used by one person at a time and were forerunners
of the workstation (for example, the Bendix G- 15
and LGP 30 in 1955), but the first truly personal
computer was the 1962 Laboratory Instrument
Computer (LINC). LINC was a self-contained
computer for an individual’s sole use with appropri-
ate interfacial hardware (keyboards, displays), pro-
gram/data filing system, with interactive program
creation and execution software. Digital Equipment’s
PDP- 1 circa 1961, followed by the more “minimal”
PDP- 5 and PDP- 8 established the minicomputer
class [ 1] that was predominantly designed for
embedded applications.

Systems-on-a-chip (SOCs) use a fraction of a chip for the microprocessor(s) portion or “cores” to create classes and are the basis of fixed-function devices and appliances beginning in the mid-1990s. These include cameras, cell phones, PDAs, PADs, and their convergence into a single CPSD or SFF package. This accounts for the PC’s rapidly evolving microprocessor’s ability to directly subsume the

3. Supercomputer: “the largest computers of the day”

1. Constant price, increasing performance.

2. Sub-class formation.

4. New, “minimal priced” computers: smallest, useful computer, new applications, new industry

Time

Figure 1. Evolving computer classes based on technology and design styles.