Computer generations – tracing Moore's law

Computer ScienceComputers & HardwareAges 13–14

Four computer generations sit on one 1945–2025 timeline with a representative machine for each: ENIAC, the IBM 1401, the IBM System/360 and today's personal computer. Students pick a comparison metric (calculation speed, number of switching components, mass, power consumption) and the chart redraws on a logarithmic scale because the values differ by billions of times. Drag the year and doubling-period sliders to see Moore's law predict the number of transistors on a chip, then compare it against real processors from the Intel 4004 to the Apple M1.