GBell's CyberMuseum for Digital Equipment Corp (DEC): Documents, Photo Albums, Talks, and Videotapes about Computing History
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Computer Engineering Computer Science Electrical Engineering History of Science and Technology Information Systems Information Technology |
| Learning Resource Type: | Reference - Index/Link |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): |
Gorden Bell
Organization: Microsoft |
| Description: | "Observations about the formation and evolution of the minicomputer industry was a key data-point in the formation of Bell's Law that minis typify. Bell's Law of Computer Classes and Class formation was first described in 1972 with the emergence of a new, lower priced microcomputer class based on the microprocessor. Established market class computers are introduced at a constant price with increasing functionality (or performance). Technology advances in semiconductors, storage, interfaces and networks enable a new computer class (platform) to form about every decade to serve a new need. Each new usually lower priced class is maintained as a quasi independent industry (market). Classes include: mainframes (60's), minicomputers (70's), networked workstations and personal computers (80's), browser-web-server structure (90's), web services (2000's), palm computing (1995), convergence of cell phones and computers (2003), and Wireless Sensor Networks aka motes (2004). Beginning in the 1990s, a single class of scalable computers called clusters built from a few to tens of thousands of commodity microcomputer-storage-networked bricks began to cover and replace mainframes, minis, and workstation. Bell predicts home and body area networks will form by 2010. See also the description of several laws (e.g. Moore's, Metcalfes's, Nathan's, Bill's, Bell's) that govern the computer industry is given in Laws, a talk by Jim Gray and Gordon Bell." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | Gordon Bell, history of computing, PDP, DEC Vax, Digital Equipment Corporation |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: | History of computing. |
| Difficulty: | Medium |
| Interactivity Level: | Medium |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | 2008 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | http://research.microsoft.com/~GBell/Digital/DECMuseum.htm |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
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