1. Five Generations of Computers
| Generation | Period | Technology Used |
| First | 1940-1956 | Vacuum Tubes |
| Second | 1956-1963 | Transistors |
| Third | 1964-1971 | Integrated Circuits(IC) |
| Fourth | 1972-2010 | Microprocessors |
| Fifth | 2010-present | Artificial Intelligence |
2. Bytes
- The number of instructions or the amount of data a computer can store in its memory is measured in bytes.
3. Internet
- It is a worldwide system of computer networks – a network of networks in which users at any one computer can get information from any other computer(if they have permission).
How does the Internet work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_LPdttKXPc
Administration of Internet
- Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN), a US non-profit organization administers the allocation of domain names and IP addresses.
- Internet Society(ISOC) is responsible for developing internet technical standards.
4. Supercomputers
- A computer or an array of computers that act as one collective machine capable of processing enormous amounts of data.
- They work at very high speeds and perform complex jobs such as nuclear research or forecasting weather patterns.
- It channels all its power into executing a few programs as fast as possible rather than executing many programs concurrently.
- It uses parallel processing instead of the serial processing in the case of an ordinary computer
Supercomputers in India
| S No. | Name | Site |
| 1 | SahasraT | Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru |
| 2 | Aaditya | Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune |
| 3 | TIFR-Cray XC30 | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai |
| 4 | HP Apollo 6000 | Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi |
| 5 | PARAM Yuva-2 | Centre for Development of Advanced Computing(C-DAC), Pune |
| 6 | PARAM ISHAN | Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati |
Supercomputers of the World
5. Quantum Computing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVv5OAR4Nik
- Quantum computing studies computation systems that make direct use of quantum-mechanical phenomena to perform operations on data.
- Classical computers encode information in bits. Each bit can take the value of 1 or 0. These 1s and 0s act as on/off switches that ultimately drive computer functions. Quantum computers, on the other hand, are based on qubits, which operate according to two key principles of quantum physics: superposition and entanglement.
- Superposition means that each qubit can represent both a 1 and a 0 at the same time.
- Entanglement means that qubits in a superposition can be correlated with each other i.e. the state of one (whether it is a 1 or a 0) can depend on the state of another.
6. Types of Cybercrimes
7. Cloud Computing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYGQcmZUTaw
- It is an Internet-based computing solution where shared resources are provided like electricity distributed on the electrical grid
- Computers in the cloud are configured to work together and the various applications use the collective computing power as if they are running on a single system.
IT PROJECTS IN INDIA
1. National Supercomputer Mission(NSM)
- The Mission envisages empowering our national academic and R&D institutions spread over the country by installing a vast supercomputing grid comprising a cluster of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities
- The Mission would be implemented and steered jointly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) at an estimated cost of Rs.4500 crore over a period of seven years.
Objectives
- To make India one of the world leaders in Supercomputing and to enhance India’s capability in solving grand challenge problems of national and global relevance
- To empower our scientists and researchers with state-of-the-art supercomputing facilities and enable them to carry out cutting-edge research in their respective domains
- To minimize redundancies and duplication of efforts, and optimize investments in supercomputing
- To attain global competitiveness and ensure self-reliance in the strategic area of supercomputing technology
Application areas
- Climate Modelling
- Weather Prediction
- Aerospace Engineering
- Computational Biology
- Molecular Dynamics
- Atomic Energy Simulations
- National Security/ Defence Applications
- Seismic Analysis
- Disaster Simulations and Management
- Computational Chemistry
- Computational Material Science and Nanomaterials
- Discoveries beyond Earth (Astrophysics)
- Large Complex Systems Simulations and Cyber Physical Systems
- Big Data Analytics
- Finance
- Information repositories/ Government Information Systems
2. National e-Governance Plan
- An initiative of the Government of India to make all Government services available to the citizens of India via electronic media
- It was formulated by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) and Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DAR&PG) to reduce government costs and allow citizen access to government services through Common Service Centres (CSC).
- It comprises of 27 Mission Mode Projects(MMP) and 10 program support components.
3. e-Kranti/National e-Governance Plan 2.0
- It is an important pillar of the Digital India programme.
- The vision of e-Kranti is “Transforming e-Governance for Transforming Governance”.
- The Mission of e-Kranti is to ensure a Government wide transformation by delivering all Government services electronically to citizens through integrated and interoperable systems via multiple modes, while ensuring efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs.
4. National Knowledge Network(NKN)
- It aims to bridge the gap between rural education, urban education, and International education by interconnecting all universities, government as well as private institutions of higher learning and research with a high-speed data communication network in the country.
