The new breed of computers: high performance with high reliability

The two most important milestones to date in the industrial application of digital computers have been the development of the minicomputer in the late 1960's and the development of the microprocessor in the early 1970's. In both cases there are a significant reduction in the cost and size of digital computer hardware. Development of the microprocessor and its associate peripheral chips led to a significant level of penetration of digital computers in almost all areas of industrial control, communication and instrumentation. The two factors which seem to have prevented a complete penetration of digital computers in all areas handled traditionally by analog techniques are the cost of the software and a lack of confidence in the reliability of complex hardware/ software systems. Developments in software languages and programming methodologies have been steadily combatting the problems of software cost and reliability. Also, the new breed of digital computer components are permitting not only high performance to be achieved, as measured in terms of central processor speed, memory capacity and input/ output throughput, but are also characterized by a marked improvement in their reliability, and perhaps more importantly, by their increasing level of support of mechanisms for achieving higher system reliability. This paper examines some of the features of the new breed of digital computer components which have made these advances possible.