Editing Commodity computing (section)

== History ==

=== The mid-1960s to early 1980s ===
The first computers were large, expensive and proprietary.  The move towards commodity computing began when [[Digital Equipment Corporation|DEC]] introduced the [[PDP-8]] in 1965.  This was a computer that was relatively small and inexpensive enough that a department could purchase one without convening a meeting of the board of directors.  The entire [[minicomputer]] industry sprang up to supply the demand for 'small' computers like the PDP-8.  Unfortunately, each of the many different brands of minicomputers had to stand on its own because there was no software and very little hardware compatibility between the brands.

When the first general purpose [[microprocessor]] was introduced in 1971 ([[Intel 4004]]) it immediately began chipping away at the low end of the computer market, replacing [[embedded system|embedded minicomputers]] in many industrial devices.

This process accelerated in 1977 with the introduction of the first commodity-like [[microcomputer]], the [[Apple II]].  With the development of the [[VisiCalc]] application in 1979, microcomputers broke out of the factory and began entering office suites in large quantities, but still through the back door.

=== The 1980s to mid-1990s ===
The [[IBM Personal Computer|IBM PC]] was introduced in 1981 and immediately began displacing [[Apple II]] systems in the corporate world, but commodity computing as we know it today truly began when [[Compaq]] developed the first true [[IBM PC compatible]]. More and more PC-compatible microcomputers began coming into big companies through the front door and commodity computing was well established.

During the 1980s, microcomputers began displacing larger computers in a serious way. At first, price was the key justification but by the late 1980s and early 1990s, [[Very-large-scale integration|VLSI]] [[semiconductor]] technology had evolved to the point where microprocessor performance began to eclipse the performance of [[discrete logic]] designs.  These traditional designs were limited by [[speed-of-light]] delay issues inherent in any CPU larger than a single chip, and performance alone began driving the success of microprocessor-based systems.

By the mid-1990s, nearly all computers made were based on microprocessors, and the majority of general purpose microprocessors were implementations of the [[x86]] [[instruction set architecture]]. Although there was a time when every traditional computer manufacturer had its own proprietary micro-based designs, there are only a few manufacturers of non-commodity computer systems today.

=== Today ===
Today, there are fewer and fewer general business computing requirements that cannot be met with off-the-shelf commodity computers.  It is likely that the low-end of the supermicrocomputer genre will continue to be pushed upward by increasingly powerful commodity microcomputers.