Clock speeds

Name Year Clock speed

8080 1974 2 MHz

8088 1979 5 MHz

80286 1982 6 MHz

80386 1985 16 MHz

80486 1989 25 MHz

Pentium 1993 60 MHz

Pentium II 1997 233 MHz

Pentium III 1999 450 MHz

Pentium IV 2000 1.5 GHz

Core (Dual processor) 2006 2.3 GHz

Core 2 (Quad Processor) 2010 3.2 GHz

With the development of each new processor has come an increase in clock speed.

Muti-core ProcessorsA new development in terms of increasing processor power is to increase the number of processors on one chip.

Dual core processors

Quad core processors

Even 8 processors on a PS3

MemoryThe memory capacity of a DRAM chip has doubled every 1.6 years since the mid 1970s.

Year Size (Mb)

1980 0.0625

1983 0.25

1986 1

1989 4

1992 16

1996 64

1999 256

2002 512

2005 1024

2010 4096

Backing StorageIn 1954, when IBM first invented the hard disk its capacity was 5Mb.

Now desktop computers have a hard disk capacity of several hundred Gb, and in some cases a Terabyte.

The floppy disc with 1.4 Mb of storage has been replaced with USB Pen drives which have capacities up to 128 Gb.

Backing StorageMost computers have CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives. A CD-RW disc can hold up to 850 Mb, while a DVD-RW disc can hold 4.7 Gb.

Cheap storage means that there are cloud computing options for storing data. Many sites offer several Gigabytes of online disk space free of charge. Google currently offers 7Gb for an individual GMail account

CreditsHigher Computing – Computer Structure – Current Trends

Produced by P. Greene for the City of Edinburgh Council 2004

Adapted by M. Cunningham 2010

All images licenced under Creative Commons 3.0• PS3 controller by Declan Jewell (DeclanTM on Flickr)• Hard disc drive assembled by Crispin Semmens (conskeptical on Flickr)• Floppy Diskovery By Pete Birkinshaw (BinaryApe on Flickr)• CD_autolev_crop.jpg by Ubern00b, retouched by Dzucconi• cloud computing by Bruce Clay, Inc