Revision as of 05:20, 21 January 2009 edit Rilak (talk \| contribs) 9,848 edits Remove tag - on closer examination, the article omits many facts, but it does not appear to be deliberate ← Previous edit		Revision as of 05:22, 21 January 2009 edit undo Rilak (talk \| contribs) 9,848 edits →The Mid-1960s to Early 1980s: The first computers were not complex - a few thousand vacuum tubes is not complex if compared to commodity microprocessors with one billion transistors. Next edit →
Line 4: == History == === The Mid-1960s to Early 1980s === The first computers were large, expensive~~, complex~~ and proprietary. The move towards commodity computing began when [[Digital Equipment Corporation\|DEC]] introduced the [[PDP-8]] in 1965. This was a computer that was relatively small and inexpensive enough that a department could purchase one without convening a meeting of the board of directors. The entire [[minicomputer]] industry sprang up to supply the demand for 'small' computers like the PDP-8. Unfortunately, each of the many different brands of minicomputers had to stand on their own because there was no software and very little hardware compatibility between them. When the first general purpose [[microprocessor]] was introduced in 1974 it immediately began chipping away at the low end of the computer market, replacing [[embedded system\|embedded minicomputers]] in many industrial devices.

Commodity computing: Difference between revisions