Types of computers

Nowadays, computers are used almost everywhere. Be it, for personal stuff at our homes or at schools, universities or work. Computers have become a part and parcel of our life. The world runs because of computers at this point. However, not always were computers so compact. Just a few decades ago, a computer would be as big as a house and perform a couple of hundred times worse than the current microcomputers. With the invention of microprocessor, computers have become as small as something that would fit in our pockets (referring to smartphones). And microprocessors have also made computers much cheaper for the crowd. Now, most people can afford a computer.

Types of computers

Computers come in different shapes and sizes. They can either be general computers or something specialized. Computers can be classified in various different ways. Below is the most common classification for computers.

1. Supercomputers

Supercomputers are the fastest and most expensive computers that are focused on solving very complex science and engineering problems. These include performing intense numerical calculations such as weather forecasting, fluid dynamics, nuclear simulations, theoretical astrophysics, and complex scientific computations. A typical supercomputer can do up to ten trillion individual calculations every second. These use parallel processing (multiple CPUs at the same time on one problem), which results in all this power. However, supercomputers are not at all cost-effective just to perform batch or transaction processing. Supercomputer processing speeds are measured in floating-point operations per second, or FLOPS.

The supercomputer 'Columbia'.

 2. Mainframe Computers

Mainframe Computers, although similar to supercomputers in many aspects, there is one main difference between the two. Supercomputers use all of it's raw power to perform very few tasks, on the other hand mainframe computers can perform thousands if not millions of operations concurrently; capable of handling and processing very large amount of data at the same time. Mainframes are used in large institutions such as government, banks, and large corporations with the intention to serve hundreds of millions of users at the same time. They are measured in MIPS (million instructions per second).

Fun fact: A mainframe computer is much faster than supercomputers at performing very large amounts of tasks.

A pair of IBM mainframes.

 3. Minicomputers

The term "Minicomputers" was used to express a class of smaller computers developed in the mid 1960s compared to humongous mainframes at that time and less expensive too. They were known as mid range computers. These computers had their own distinct architecture and operating systems. Minis were built for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching rather than calculation and record keeping. However, with the popularization of microcomputers, minicomputers had a huge decline in the 90s to the point that the term minicomputers is almost unheard of nowadays.

Fun fact: In a 1970 survey, The New York Times suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as, "a machine costing less than US$25,000 (equivalent to $165,000 in 2019), with an input-output device such as a teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC."

An IBM minicomputer.

4. Microcomputers

Microcomputers, defined as small and inexpensive computer containing a microprocessor as it's central processing unit (CPU), that became the most common type of computers in the late 20th century and it's popularity has only been going upwards; to the point the term "micro" itself became an anachronism and has fallen out of common use. Much smaller than it's predecessors, minis and mainframes and way less expensive. With various improvements, made more and more affordable and compact, microcomputers have become norm for modern day. Modern examples of microcomputers would be desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, gaming consoles, programmable calculators etc. A classification of microcomputers would be:

• Desktop computers
• Smartphones
• Gaming consoles
• Laptops
• Personal digital assistant (PDA)
• Tablets
• Server microcomputers
• Workstations

A laptop computer.