List an explain the FIVE (5) categories / types of computers and provide an example based on either the type of computer or how these computers are used.
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Answer:
Supercomputers
A supercomputer is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It’s a term used to describe computers that have the most capable processing power of its time. Early supercomputers in the 60s and 70s used just a couple processors, while the 90s saw supercomputers with thousands of processors at a time. Today, modern supercomputers run hundreds of thousands of processors, capable of computing quadrillions of calculations in just a few nanoseconds. You probably won’t be needing that kind of power to access Facebook… Actually, supercomputers are used in computational science to calculate and carry out a plethora of complex tasks. Modeling molecular structures, weather forecasting, and the field of quantum mechanics, among others, rely on supercomputers and their intense processing power to solve their equations.
Mainframe Computers
Like supercomputers, mainframe computers are huge, towering machines with lots of processing power. Mainframe computers are mostly used by corporations, government agencies, and banks – organizations that need a way to store large quantities of information. They are not the same as supercomputers. The processing capabilities of mainframe computers are measured in MIPS, or millions of instructions per second. Supercomputers, on the other hand, are measured in FLOPS, or floating point operations per seconds.
Minicomputers
A minicomputer is a multiprocessing machine that can support up to about 200 users at the same time. It’s like a less powerful mainframe computer, and is about the size of a refrigerator. A server can be an example of a minicomputer, but not all servers are minicomputers. Despite their name, a minicomputer is not a personal computer like the desktop machine you might have at home or work. They are much larger than that. Because of the ways microcomputers – which we’ll cover next – have excelled in processing power even beyond minicomputers, and at a much smaller size, minicomputers have become pretty much obsolete.
Microcomputers
Microcomputers are the ones people are most familiar with on a daily, non-professional basis, but of course that doesn’t mean they’re exclusive to the home. Microcomputers are smaller computers that run on microprocessors in their central processing units. They are much, much cheaper than supercomputers, mainframe computers and even minicomputers, because they’re meant for everyday uses that are more practical than professional. The range of capabilities for microcomputers are still vast, though. A film editor might use a microcomputer to run many intensive editing programs at once, while a student might use a microcomputer for Facebook and word processing.
Laptops: Portable computers designed to be carried from place to place. All of its components are contained inside a panel that functions also as the keyboard, with an attached screen that can be folded over. Because of their size and convenience, these are some of the most popular computers for everyday use. However, despite the convenience and ease of use, they aren’t without problems