Fifth generation computers

Fifth generation computers are analogous to LEGO building blocks, with each block corresponding to a microcomputer and a group of blocks working together as a computer system. These computers will represent a unification of currently separate areas of research into parallel processing and into VLSI processors. Parallel processing based on data driven and demand driven computer organisations are under investigation in well over thirty laboratories in the United States, Japan and Europe. Basically, in data driven (e.g. data flow) computers the availability of operands triggers the execution of the operation to be performed on them; whereas in demand driven (e.g. reduction) computers the requirement for a result triggers the operation that will generate the value. VLSI processors exploit very large scale integration and the new simplified chip design methodology pioneered in US universities by Mead and Conway, allowing users to design their own chips. These novel VLSI processors are implementable by simple replicated cells and use extensive pipelining and multiprocessing to achieve a high performance. Examples range from a powerful image processing device configured from identical special-purpose chips, to a large parallel computer built from replicated general-purpose microcomputers. This paper outlines these topics contributing to fifth generation computers, and speculates on their effect on computing.