Computer, device for processing, storing, and displaying information.

Computer once meant an individual who did computations, but now the term almost universally refers to automated electronic machinery. the primary section of this text focuses on modern digital electronic computers and their design, constituent parts, and applications. The second section covers the history of computing. For details on computer architecture, software, and theory, see computing .

computer system

Computing Basics:

The first computers were used primarily for numerical calculations. However, as any information are often numerically encoded, people soon realized that computers are capable of general-purpose information science . Their capacity to handle large amounts of knowledge has extended the range and accuracy of meteorology . Their speed has allowed them to form decisions about routing telephone connections through a network and to regulate mechanical systems like automobiles, nuclear reactors, and robotic surgical tools. they're also cheap enough to be embedded in everyday appliances and to form clothes dryers and rice cookers “smart.” Computers have allowed us to pose and answer questions that would not be pursued before. These questions could be about DNA sequences in genes, patterns of activity during a consumer market, or all the uses of a word in texts that are stored during a database. Increasingly, computers also can learn and adapt as they operate.

Computers even have limitations, a number of which are theoretical. for instance , there are undecidable propositions whose truth can't be determined within a given set of rules, like the logical structure of a computer. Because no universal algorithmic method can exist to spot such propositions, a computer asked to get the reality of such a proposition will (unless forcibly interrupted) continue indefinitely—a condition referred to as the “halting problem.” (See Turing machine .) Other limitations reflect current technology. Human minds are skilled at recognizing spatial patterns—easily distinguishing among human faces, for instance—but this is often a difficult task for computers, which must process information sequentially, instead of grasping details overall at a look . Another problematic area for computers involves tongue interactions. Because such a lot public knowledge and contextual information is assumed in ordinary human communication, researchers have yet to unravel the matter of providing relevant information to general-purpose tongue programs.

Analog computers

Analog computers use continuous physical magnitudes to represent quantitative information. initially they represented quantities with mechanical components (see analog computer and integrator), but after war II voltages were used; by the 1960s digital computers had largely replaced them. Nonetheless, analog computers, and a few hybrid digital-analog systems, continued in use through the 1960s in tasks like aircraft and spaceflight simulation.

One advantage of analog computation is that it's going to be relatively simple to style and build an analogue computer to unravel one problem. Another advantage is that analog computers can frequently represent and solve a drag in “real time”; that's , the computation proceeds at an equivalent rate because the system being modeled by it. Their main disadvantages are that analog representations are limited in precision—typically a couple of decimal places but fewer in complex mechanisms—and general-purpose devices are expensive and not easily programmed.