3.3.4 Compare the characteristics and applications of different kinds of
computers.
Teaching Note:
Personal computers, portable computers, mainframes and
supercomputers should be considered. Characteristics must include:
primary and secondary memory size; input/ouput (I/O) devices;
environment (size, convenience, where it is used); cost, users (multior
single-); and processor (word length, bus size and frequency).
JSR Notes:
So here you have it: in terms of the "power" continuum of computing: portable computers (and really, somewhere in the same range now-a-days phones, hand-held Games consoles etc.) personal computers (what you use, either laptop or desktop), mainframe, and super computer.
And so which "characteristics" are most important to be able to compare? In the teaching note the focus is to be what you can read above. But not a bad idea to be clear what exactly each in the list is.
Primary memory - RAM & cache
Secondary memory - storage
Input/Output devices (and you may only see the abbreviation I/O for these terms) - keyboards, mice, etc.
Environment - where used primarily (eg. personally, versus, for example in universities and research institutions.)
Cost
Multi vs. Single user
Processor - 32-bit vs 64-bit or more, GHz. etc.
And generally, all these values go up with the sophistication of the computer.
But do remember that since mainframes specialize in multi-user environments, it will be storage, along with processing power and RAM that will be important. And that with super computers, yes, there will be need for a pretty good amount of storage, and plenty of RAM, but it is processing power that is paramount.
And, for super computers, think of tasks that have many thousands and millions of different combinations and permutations that need to be considered and crunched; modeling - such as that for weather prediction is a classic. Though here's another great one. I helped out a guy in Malaysia once who ran a firm that had a patented, secret algorithm for doing airport simulations. His system ran through all sorts of parameters that simulated the way an airport would operate and discovered bottle-necks that would slow down the overall efficiency of the airport. These weaknesses were only discovered by running the simulation very many times with a very powerful computer system. So, super computers: for research, modeling and simulation.
One last note here is that the speeds and amount of RAM etc. obviously increase very fast with time, but the relative speeds and amounts between various computer systems remains relatively constant.