The development of the next generation of computer systems is
characterised mainly by the acceptance of parallel processing. Until
this time parallel processing was limited to pipelining and vector
processing. The fifth generation also included processors that could
all be working on different parts of a single program. Semiconductors
have done a good job in this period and in 1990 it was possible to
make chips with a million components. Also semiconductor memories
became standard on all computers. In the latter part of this generation
, scientist invented the net work systems and they are very common in
Universities, government Offices, companies, etc.
After 1985, large scale parallel processing occurred and two other
systems were introduced around this time. The Intel iPSC-1 is one of
the most important inventions of this generation. Intel could connect
each processor to its own memory and used a network interface to
connect processors instead of using one memory module. The largest
iPSC-1 had 128 processors.
Towards the end of this period a third type of parallel processor
was introduced to the market. These types of machines are known as a
data parallel or SIMD. This included several thousand simple processors
.
In the scientific world, vector processing dominated and also they
used parallel processing system.
In this period the whole world tended to the network systems and there
was a rapid growth in network area. This period also saw a marked
increase in both the quality and quantity of scientific visualisation.
