COMPUTERS APPLICATIONS

IN MANAGEMENT
PROF DR BÜLENT EKİCİ
Computer has been the premier invention of this century. Now a days
Computer plays an important role in almost every part of our lives, and
their importance is so great that without them we would not be able to live
the way we do. Look around you and you would find computers scattered
all over the places, starting with the machine of computer to washing
machine to refrigerator to car to mobile and to life saving devices with the
doctors; everywhere a small computer working for your convenience and
they seem performing almost any task in the world.
The word “computer” comes from word compute, which means to
calculate. “A computer is a programmable machine (or more precisely,
a programmable sequential state machine) that operates on data and is
used for wide range of activities”.
Basically Computer system are a combination of the five elements i.e.

• Hardware,
• Software,
• People,
• Procedure and
• Data / information.
In computers, FLOPS are floating-point operations per second. Floating-point is,
according to IBM, "a method of encoding real numbers within the limits of finite
precision available on computers." Using floating-point encoding, extremely long
numbers can be handled relatively easily.
• Transistors were introduced in 1950’s by John Bardeen and William
Schokley from BELL Laboratories
• More transistors could be placed on one chip and they were vry much
faster
• The US Government intervened to accelerate the development Remington
Rand and IBM given the challenge to make first of all transistor machine
• Remington Rand won the contract
• LARC made with 60,000 transistors
• IBM worked in the background made 169100 transistor machine but were
unable to reach required speed
• After losing millions of dolars both industries decided to proceed to amore
lucrative business market
• A vacuum built on the high computation side this was later on taken up by
Control Data Corporation lead by Seymour Cray which would lead the
market for next two decades
• Integrated circuits and then processors on a single chip were
introduced
• Power consumption decreased
• These integrated circuits marked the beginning of the increase of
speed by more by design
• Seymour implemented what was known as vectorization in processor
design
Under the right conditions the shift to the new technology can lead to possible
increase in processor speed of hundred to thousand times. In order to have a better
idea of the evolution of computers it is worthwhile to discuss some of the well-
known early computers. These are as follows:
5. The EDSAC (1947-49): Almost simultaneously with EDVAC of U.S.A.; the
Britishers developed the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC).
6. The UNIVAC I (1951): The Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) was
the first digital computer that was not “one of a kind”
1. Speed:

2. Accuracy:

3. Storage:
4. Programmability:

5. Diligence:

6. Versatility:

7. Power of remembrance:
Computers can be classified many different ways -- by size, by
function, and/or by processing capacity.
1) Micro Computers: A microcomputer’s CPU is a microprocessor.
The microcomputer originated in late 1970’s.

One character is equal to one byte or 8 bits

2) Minicomputers: The term minicomputer originated in 1960s when it
was realized that many computing tasks do not require an expensive
contemporary mainframe computers but can be solved by a small,
inexpensive computer.
3) Workstation is a powerful stand-alone computer of the sort used
in computer aided design and other applications requiring a high-
end, expensive machine with considerable calculating or graphics
capability.
4) Mainframe Computers are very powerful, large-scale general-
purpose computers.

Fig. 1.6 Mainframe Computer

5) Super Computers processing capabilities lies in the range of
GIPS2, word length 64-128 or may be in 256 or so.

Titan or OLCF-3 is a supercomputer built by Cray at Oak Ridge

National Laboratoryfor use in a variety of science projects. Titan
is an upgrade of Jaguar, a previous supercomputer at Oak
Ridge, that uses graphics processing units (GPUs) in addition to
conventional central processing units (CPUs). Titan is the first
such hybrid to perform over 10 petaFLOPS. The upgrade began
in October 2011, commenced stability testing in October 2012
and it became available to researchers in early 2013. The initial
cost of the upgrade was US$60 million, funded primarily by
the United States Department of Energy.
6. Quantum Computers
Over 50 years of advances in mathematics, materials science, and
computer science have transformed quantum computing from theory
to reality.
What is quantum computing?
Quantum computing takes advantage of the strange ability of
subatomic particles to exist in more than one state at any time. Due to
the way the tiniest of particles behave, operations can be done much
more quickly and use less energy than classical computers.
The first generation of computer was marked by the use of vacuum tubes for
the electronic components and by the use of either electrostatic tubes (i.e.,
cathode ray tubes) or mercury delay lines for storage.
Third Generation Computers (1965- 1975)
The arrival of the third generation in the mid-1960s proved to be
an important milestone in the evolution of computers.
Fourth Generation Computers (1975- present)
The fourth generation of computers arrived in the mid-1970s. The
distinguishing marks were the introduction of standard architecture,
which was provided for greater mobility of systems, the introduction of
micro-technology and significant software developments.
 The outstanding features of this generation are:
• Further reductions in the size of
the hardware
• Better price performance
• Large scale and very large scale
Integrated Circuits (LSI/VLSI)
• Semiconductor primary storage
• Online real time processing
• User friendly software
• Widespread use of CRT terminals
• Development of electronic
spreadsheet
• High-level languages
• Microprocessor used
• Increase cost of software
• Data base management system
• Distributes processing
• Graphics manipulation
• Pentium/AMD based are the
fourth generation computers
Fifth Generation Computer (Future Computers ?)
It is very difficult to define the fifth generation of the computer.

• Organic chips
• Decreasing cost of software
• Decreasing cost of hardware
• Artificial Intelligence
• Multi point input-output
• Large storage facility
• Auto decision
• High speed
• Under development in USA, Japan and UK