What is the best Computer or Laptop for CAD Software such as Autocad, Solidworks, Inventor, Revit or many others?
What is CAD Software anyway, and why is it so difficult to find reliable information on what type of Hardware Components you need to build a greatly performing PC for CAD?
Well, let’s dive right in!
What is CAD Software and what is it not?
You might have already read some of the Articles on this blog that talk about building the best Computers for DCC (Digital Content Creation) Software such as Cinema 4D, After Effects or for Video Editing and 3D Modeling & Rendering.
The thing is though, I do not consider Software such as Cinema 4D, Maya, 3DS Max or Blender, CAD Software.
The reason is, that the mentioned Apps are targeted at Content Creation for visual purposes that don’t necessarily need high precision but rather should make an Image or Animation look believable or photorealistic, but not mathematically correct.
Because, hey, when I am sitting in the Movie Theaters and watching a VFX Movie, that Space ship hovering over the Earth is quite believable, but if it is Mathematically correct and possible, is not really the issue here.
Another important factor in DCC Softwares such as Cinema 4D, Maya and the like is, that they are mainly based on Polygons and not Curves.
Yes, there are tools that let you create curves and NURBS Objects, but the main work is usually done with polygons that at a certain Polygon resolution suffice for making an object believable and smooth.
Image-Source: AutodeskCAD Software though is targeted at mathematically precise Forms of content creation.
Content that simulates real-life properties. It is of utmost importance that e.g. a rocket nozzle on a SpaceX Booster Engine is modeled to an extremely high mathematical precision, otherwise, the Rocket might not last very long after launch. If it launches at all.
Image-Source: Autodesk
For the sake of this article let’s name the polygon 3D Softwares “DCC” and the Precision Softwares “CAD”.
CAD Softwares come in many forms and Brands, some open source, some whoppingly expensive.
In this Article on building the best PC for CAD Applications, I’ll focus on Autocad, Solidworks, Inventor, and Revit, as these are some of the most popular ones out there.
Of course, lots of the theory and Part Recommendations can also be applied to other CAD Software as they all tend to work very similarly.
How do CAD Apps utilize the Hardware?
Very Similar to 3D Modeling and Rendering in DCC Apps, CAD Software relies on high clocking Hardware, especially in the CPU and GPU for active work.
Active work meaning, you are sitting in front of your workstation and actively modeling and working on a project.
These I call attended tasks and they require you to interact and be present at all times, otherwise, your project does not progress.
The other type of task is the unattended task. This includes things like Rendering and Simulation caching and other processing tasks.
These tasks run on their own and usually take longer than a few milliseconds to process (often hours and days).
Tasks that take days to process have a high probability to be targeted by developers earlier for making them ready for multi-processing. And of course, as soon as they are possible to be worked on by multiple cores, they can be processed much faster.
Look at this Single VS Multi-Core Performance scaling to get a feel for how more Cores can improve performance in multi-threaded workloads:
For these type of tasks, you will need the maximum number of Cores and not necessarily a high core clock.
Of course, having both, a high core clock and lots of cores is best, but not always possible.
So to recap:Your Active Work and snappiness performance require a high-clocking CPU and GPU, whereas parallelizable tasks such as Rendering and Processing needs lots of Cores.
Best Hardware for CAD
So let’s apply this to some real Hardware. What parts do we need for a PC anyway and what components make the CAD work we do the fastest:
Best Processor (CPU) for CAD Software
As you can see in these benchmarks that measure the CPU performance in Autocad, Solidworks, Inventor and Revit, the tendency is quite clear.
The higher the IPC a CPU has the better it performs in the respective CAD Software.
Image-Source: guru3d.com
IPC (Instructions per Cycle) of course is something that is not openly advertised by the manufacturer, so let’s take the Boost clock as an indicator.
The Turbo Boost Clock of a CPU is probably the closest we can match the IPC indicator of a CPU, with the benefit, that Boost Clocks are advertised on CPUs and this lets us easily buy and compare CPU Performance.
CPUs are clocked at a predefined Base Clock and can automatically overclock a Core or multiple cores to a higher Clock as long as the entire CPU with all its Cores does not exceed a power or temperature limit.
In the above Cinebench Benchmark, the single-core performance was measured at the maximum possible clocks the CPU will automatically clock at.
Let’s make an example: an Intel i7 8700K CPU has a base clock of 3,6GHz and a Boost Clock of 4,7GHz.
In this specific case the CPU can overclock 1 Core up to 4,7GHz, 2 Cores up to 4,6GHz 3C: 4,5GHz, 2-5C: 4,4GHz and all 6 Cores up to 4,3GHz.
This means, when we work in a Software that currently utilizes only 1 Core of a CPU, this CPU Core can and will most probably run at its advertised max Turbo Boost Clock.
Membuat sistem barcode dengan visual basic software. The higher the Clock, the better the Performance.
Look at these Inventor Benchmarks of Finite Element Analysis Meshing. High-Core-Clocks with High Turbo-Boost Clocks win all the way (Lower is better):
Image-Source: Autodesk-Forum
Here are some Revit Benchmarks made by Pugetsystems.com. Again, in Single-Thread Workloads a High-Core Clock (IPC) wins, in multi-threaded workloads such as Rendering, More Cores win.
Performance relative to an i7 7700K that has 4,5GHz Boost Clock, 4 Cores, 8 Threads
These Autocad 2D and 3D Performance Benchmarks were taken with the Cadalyst Benchmark Tool and show how high-core-clocks win every time.
Image-Source: tomshardware
And one last CPU Benchmark for Solidworks, confirming what we have already seen:
Image-Source: tomshardware
Turbo Boost and IPC are so important because many tasks cannot be parallelized.
Either because a Software’s Code is old and hasn’t been updated or optimized in a long time, or because certain Tasks just can’t be parallelized, because of things like dependencies.
Think about this example concerning dependencies: You are modeling a House in Revit and have your Scene nicely optimized in Hierarchical Categories.
It looks a bit like this:
Now we will thicken the House Wall Extrusion a bit. We have 5 different Objects and would think that having a CPU with (in this case) 5 Cores would speed up the thickening of the House Wall Extrusion, because every core can work on one object, right?
Wouldn’t that speed things up nicely?
It would, but unfortunately, because the Objects are dependent on each other as they are in a hierarchical chain, The CPU will have to step through the top-most Hierarchie first and then move on to the lower ones.
There is no way the screw Booleans can already be calculated before the Edge Bevel has been finished processing and so on. Because of dependencies. A single CPU-Core will have to work through the entire hierarchy chain by itself.
A single CPU will have to first calculate the thicker Wall Extrusion, after that it can calculate the Window Boolean, then the Edge Bevel on The Window Boolean, then the Edge Bevel on that Window Boolean Edge, and only after all of these have been stepped through can the CPU calculate the screw Booleans that are in the Edge Bevel.
And this is quite a simple example made for easy understanding. What usually goes on inside a CAD Software is much more complex.
So long story short: We need a high clocking CPU, that optimallyhas a nice Boost Clock on one or more cores, to be able to work as fast as possible with a responsive and snappy Viewport in CAD Applications.
Only considering IPC and Core-Clocks, the currently best CPU for CAD Apps when actively working on projects is the Intel i9 9900K which Turbo Boosts up to 5GHz on one Core.
Some more great runner ups are:
These are all high-clocking CPUs that will give you a smooth working experience.
What about Xeon?
What’s the deal with Xeon? It seems to be recommended very often on CAD Software Manufacturers Sites, so it should perform well, shouldn’t it?
Well, the thing with Xeon is, you usually trade Reliability, Durability & Support and a high Price for Performance.
Intel Xeons are a lot pricier than i7 or i9 CPUs (or AMD CPUs of course for that matter), their clocks are lower, IPC is lower & the Turbo Boost Clocks are lower.
BUT, XEONs have ECC Memory Support (Error Correcting memory) that CAN in some cases make your CAD Software a bit more stable.
Also, often times expensive CAD Software Manufacturers only offer support when you actually have a XEON (that they recommend and then, of course, should also support) and not a mainstream or HEDT CPU.
So if you absolutely need reliability and need immediate support for your systems, then you would have to go the Xeon Route for many of the top tier CAD Apps out there.
Then again, if you value performance over reliability and can support yourself by googling or asking in forums, you should be getting a performance CPU as mentioned above, such as the Intel i7, i9 or AMD Ryzen / Threadripper CPUs.
Best Graphics Card for CAD Software
Let’s clear up this Quadro vs. Geforce debate once and for all.
The Benchmarks will support my writing: The Geforce GTX or RTX Cards are faster in almost all CAD Benchmarks. Autocad, Inventor, (Solidworks = special case), Revit you name it.
BUT, again, as with CPUs, the Quadro Cards have other things to offer.
They have different Drivers than their Mainstream counterparts that enable some features in various CAD apps and also offer 10Bit Color support for your Monitors.
Also, again, the question of Support is not to be neglected.
Many CAD Application Manufacturers only offer (good) support if you have Hardware that matches their Hardware Recommendations, and that is usually Xeon + Quadro or an AMD Radeon Pro WX counterpart.
Ask yourself, do you value stability and professional support over performance, go with a Quadro / WX.
If it’s just your own Workstation you have to worry about and you can help yourself and want the fastest experience possible and would like to save some money (because Quadros are so much more expensive) go with a Geforce GTX or RTX GPU.
As seen in the Benchmarks, an Nvidia RTX 2080Ti is on top of the charts pretty much everywhere but followed closely by some lower-tier cards such as the 2080 RTX and 2070 RTX.
Even High-End Cards such as the Quadro P6000 that cost about 4000$ can’t compete with a 1200$ RTX 2080Ti in AutoCAD.
Image-Source: gamersnexus.com
That said, Solidworks does benefit vom Quadro cards very much. It seems this software has been well optimized to make use of the additional Features that Nvidia Quadros have to offer. Take a look at these recent Benchmarks here by Pugetsystems:
Even the smallest Quadro seems to be quite a lot faster than a strong 1080Ti.
Now that we have the most controversial Parts of a CAD Computer out of the way lets move on to some standards:
Best Mainboard for CAD Applications
Different Mainboards won’t influence your performance all that much, but you should make sure the Motherboard you are getting supports all the features you need and matches the Hardware that you are going to plug into it.
Of course, you should match the Mainboard Socket to the CPU you chose earlier. Get an LGA 1151 Mainboard for an i7 8700K, and an AM4 Mainboard for a Ryzen 2700X CPU and so on.
Image-Source: tweakpc.de
Other features you should look out for might be the amount of PCIe-Slots that you can plug Graphics Cards into, the amount of USB connectors, the amount of supported RAM and RAM Slots as well as the number of Storage Devices such as M.2 Slots you have available to use. Dark souls pc controls.
For the Intel i9 9900K, that I currently recommend highly for CAD Apps, you will need an LGA 1151 v2 Mainboard such as the ASUS Prime Z390-A ATX 1151.
Best RAM (Memory) for CAD Software
CAD Work is very similar to working in 3D Applications like Cinema 4D or Maya.
The amount of RAM needed depends very much on how complex your projects and models are and how many you have opened at the same time.
Another factor of course always is how many different Applications you have opened at any given time.
Running Windows 10, for example, and having Chrome, a Mail Program, some other DCC Softwares like Photoshop and Illustrator and a Word-Processing App open together with your CAD Software will surely eat away at your RAM much more than when you have only one App open at a time.
But it is ease of use that we are looking for, and closing down other Applications just so we can use our CAD Software is not what we have in mind.
For lighter CAD work you should be looking to buy at least 16GB of RAM. Yes, you can get away with 8GB, but it might get nasty very quickly, so better to be on the safe side!
With more complex assemblies you should be leaning towards 32GB of RAM over 16GB.
If money is no Object, of course, go with 64GB of RAM which should settle it once and for all.
If you are going the Xeon CPU route you can get ECC RAM that will correct some calculation errors and might make your CAD Software slightly stabler.
Good non-ECC RAM for Mainstream or HEDT CPUs such as the i7, i9 or Ryzen / Threadripper Line-up, that I can recommend include the Corsair LPX DDR4 Vengeance RAM that comes in all sorts of sizes.
As Clock Speed in RAM is usually negligible as a performance influencer, you can start with the cheapest, which is usually DDR4-2400MHz and work your way up from there if you want to.
Concerning ECC RAM, I have had good experiences with Kingston as in the Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 16 GB DDR4-2400 ECC RAM.
Best SSD / HDD / Storage for CAD Work
Assemblies and other Project Files can get quite big, especially on complex projects, and you will be happy to have enough space to keep the entire projects saved in multiple revisions as well as a fast drive to read and write the Data from and to the storage Device.
The currently best type of storage Device for a lot of PC-Users, including CAD purposes, are the NVME M.2 SSDs.
This stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express M.2 (the form factor) Solid State Drive and basically is an SSD that has been further developed to
An NVME SSD you can plug into the motherboard without needing any cables. It is smaller than a candy bar and about 5 times as fast as a regular SATA SSD and even about 25x faster than a mechanical HDD.
I recommend getting a Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSD that come in different sizes.
Of course, NVME Drives are somewhat more expensive than HDDs or SATA SSDs and the best plan usually is to get both.
A smaller NVME SSD for active projects, apps, and the OS. And a large HDD for Backup and Archiving.
Best Case for CAD Work
The Computer-Case, of course, will not influence the performance of your CAD Build in any way. Well maybe in terms of air-flow, but that can usually be neglected as CAD Work tends not to make your CPU or GPU overheat all that fast.
There are lots of Cases out there in all kinds of Colors, Sizes and from all kinds of Brands.
There is not much you can do wrong here. Be sure to get a big enough case for your components, usually ATX Midi-Tower or bigger.
A nice Case that I keep coming back to is the be quiet! Silent Base 601 orange, as it looks professional and has some noise dampening features that will make your best Computer for CAD quieter.
Image-Source: be quiet
Best PSU for CAD
The Power Supply Unit should have enough Wattage to be able to Power your Components.
If you are unsure as to how much Watt your selected Components actually need, check out this easy to use Wattage-Calculator over on bequiet’s Website.
Some reliable Brands to look out for are Corsair, beQuiet, and Seasonic that I have all been able to successfully use and test for quite some while now.
It is wise to get a somewhat stronger than needed PSU in case you upgrade your Computer in the future either with added hardware components or with new components all-together.
That way you can keep your PSU across different builds for several more years, as PSUs usually don’t go out of date and are always compatible with Hardware in the years to come.
For the Build that we are putting together in this Article, Intel i9 9900K, Asus Z390-A Mainboard, 32GB RAM, Samsung 970 EVO SSD, I’d recommend a 650 Watt PSU (or higher) such as the Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 650W ATX 2.4, but there are lots of others that you might prefer.
Finished PC Builds
That’s about it for the Main Hardware Components needed for a great Computer for CAD Work!
Let’s take a look at some finished Builds at different price points, that will work well with CAD Apps such as Autocad, Solidworks, Inventor, Revit and lots of others.
Keep in mind, that these are Performance builds and not Reliability/Support Builds. If you are responsible for CAD Computers at a large Company you might want to trade performance for reliability and support, but that, of course, is up to you.
Performance Builds: Best Computers for CADBest Performance Computer for CAD, AMD ~700$
Some Build notes:
If you are experienced enough to do a BIOS upgrade you should consider the AMD Ryzen 2600 that will work on this board with a BIOS upgrade. If you still want a second Generation Ryzen CPU but don’t want to flash your BIOS, go with a 400 Series Chipset that supports these already.
Consider upgrading to an Nvidia GTX 1060, if you can spare some more cash.
Best Performance Computer for CAD, AMD ~1500$
Some Build notes:
This is a basic AMD build that you can build upon. The Case is professional looking, minimalistic and quiet. There is no room for Optical drives, you will need a different Case if you want to have DVD/CD Drives.
The AMD Ryzen 2700X is the fastest of the second Generation Ryzen CPUs with excellent Multi-Core and good Single Core performance. All AMD Ryzen CPUs usually come with included CPU coolers, so no extra Cooler needed here.
I added a Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe Drive in this build that will give you extreme Storage Performance. The Asus Turbo Series GPUs are Blower-Style GPUs, meaning you can stack them on top of each other in Multi-GPU Builds, without loosing too much Cooling performance.
Best Performance Computer for CAD, Intel ~1900$
Some Build notes: This is a basic build that you can build upon. The Case is professional looking, minimalistic and quiet. There is no room for Optical drives, you will need a different Case if you want to have DVD/CD Drives.
The Intel CPUs need additional CPU Coolers, so I added an excellent CPU Air Cooler from BeQuiet here. Air Coolers are usually quieter than AIO or Water Cooling solutions, as they only have one Fan. If you are planning on some more extreme overclocking, you might want to consider getting a different CPU cooling solution though.
Reliability Build: Best Computer for CADBest reliability Computer for CAD, Intel XEON / Nvidia Quadro ~6350$
This is an excellent Reliability / Durability / Stability Computer for CAD Applications with the potential of being granted Support from more picky Software Manufacturers. The Xeon gets you ECC RAM Support and the Quadro offers Drivers with additional Features in many CAD Apps as well as 10bit Monitor Color output. The price tag sure is hefty, but that is what you pay nowadays for reliability.
Custom PC-Builder Tool
Head on over to the Web-Based CGDirector Custom PC-Builder Tool that lets you configure your Computer at custom price points for all kinds of purposes. It suggests parts that work well together and gets the maximum performance out of your budget.
Build your own Computer
Assembling your Computer yourself has many benefits. It is much cheaper to buy the individual hardware Components and assemble them on your own. It is lot’s of fun, it’s easy and you learn a lot.
With that knowledge, you might be able to troubleshoot any problems that might arise later on yourself, without having to bring your Computer back to a shop to have it fixed.
You can upgrade yourself when newer and faster hardware is available and you learn a lot about how computers work, which is always great to know!
Start by taking a look at what parts you need for building your own Computer. After that, here is an easy to follow Video Tutorial on how to build/assemble your own Computer:
Best Laptops for CAD Software such as Autocad, Solidworks, Inventor, Revit and more
So what about Laptops? We have been talking about Desktop Computers all this time but fortunately, everything we discussed above can also be applied to a Laptop.
The Theory behind what is important to create a greatly performing Laptop for CAD Work is the same as in desktop Computers for CAD.
We will need a high-clocking CPU, a GTX or RTX GPU, 16-32GB of RAM and a fast M.2 SSD.
In Laptops, as the Hardware components are usually supposed to draw much less power the components will not reach the performance of Desktop Computer Parts.
But that is to be expected from such a small enclosure. In a Laptop, you get the benefit of Mobility but trade it for performance.
In Laptops too, we will differentiate between performance vs reliability/support, as both the Xeon CPUs and the Quadro GPUs are available for Laptops.
Best Performance Laptop for CAD Software
If it’s Performance you are after, you will want to lean towards a high-clocking CPU and a higher-end GPU such as the GTX 1070 as you will find in the following Laptop:
The GIGABYTE Aero 15X v8-BK4 15″ Ultra Slim Laptop.
Image-Source: techspot.com
The Specifications on this Gigabyte Laptop are:
Check the current Price here.
Some notes on this Laptop:
This Gigabyte Laptop has the “Gaming” branding in its Title. This can be misleading to many looking for a workstation Laptop.
The reason Laptops are often-times advertised as Gaming-Laptops is because of the strong Graphics Card. The Area of 3D and CAD is not big enough to have its own branding name. This Laptop though will be excellent for CAD work as well because we need a strong GPU for CAD.
It even has a higher Tier Graphics Card, the Nvidia 1070 GTX with 8 GB of VRAM. It weighs just slightly over 2KG.
Two more great choices with similar Hardware are the Asus GX531GS (Zephyrus S) and the Raze Blade 15.
Best Reliability / Support / Stability Laptop for CAD Software
The Lenovo ThinkPad P52 (2018) 15.6″ Business Laptop.
The Specifications on this Gigabyte Laptop are:
Check the current Price here.
Some notes on this Laptop:
The Lenovo ThinkPad P52 has a 6-Core Intel Xeon CPU that boosts up to 4.4GHz. With 16GB of Ram, an Nvidia Quadro P2000 GPU and a PCIe-M.2 SSD you will get the Reliability Workstation Experience inside a mobile Form factor.
That’s about it! What Computer or Laptop for CAD are you thinking of buying?
Popular on CGDirector Right now!
As technology progressed in the early and mid-1900s, the need for enhanced computational speed grew. In response to this deficit, the American military invested half a million dollars to create the ideal computing machine.
Who Invented the ENIAC?
On May 31, 1943, the military commission for the new computer began with the partnership of John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert, with the former serving as the chief consultant and Eckert as the chief engineer. Eckert had been a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering when he and Mauchly met in 1943. It took the team about one year to design the ENIAC and then 18 months plus half a million dollars in tax money to build it. The machine wasn't officially turned on until November 1945, by which time the war was over. However, not all was lost, and the military still put ENIAC to work, performing calculations for the design of a hydrogen bomb, weather predictions, cosmic-ray studies, thermal ignition, random-number studies, and wind-tunnel design.
The ENIAC
In 1946, Mauchly and Eckert developed the Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator (ENIAC). The American military sponsored this research because it needed a computer for calculating artillery-firing tables, the settings used for different weapons under varied conditions for target accuracy.
As the branch of the military responsible for calculating the tables, the Ballistics Research Laboratory (BRL) became interested after hearing about Mauchly's research at the Moore School. Mauchly had previously created several calculating machines and in 1942 began designing a better calculating machine based on the work of John Atanasoff, an inventor who used vacuum tubes to speed up calculations.
The patent for ENIAC was filed in 1947. An excerpt from that patent, (U.S.#3,120,606) filed on June 26, read, 'With the advent of everyday use of elaborate calculations, speed has become paramount to such a high degree that there is no machine on the market today capable of satisfying the full demand of modern computational methods.'
What Eas Inside the ENIAC?
The ENIAC was an intricate and elaborate piece of technology for the time. Housed within 40 9-foot-tall cabinets, the machine contained 17,468 vacuum tubes along with 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches, and 5 million soldered joints. Its dimensions covered 1,800 square feet (167 square meters) of floor space and weighed 30 tons, and running it consumed 160 kilowatts of electrical power. Two 20-horsepower blowers delivered cool air to keep the machine from overheating. The vast extent of energy being used led to a rumor that turning on the machine would cause the city of Philadelphia to experience brownouts. However, the story, which was first reported incorrectly by the Philadelphia Bulletin in 1946, has since been discounted as an urban myth.
In just one second, the ENIAC (1,000 times faster than any other calculating machine to date) could perform 5,000 additions, 357 multiplications, or 38 divisions. The use of vacuum tubes instead of switches and relays resulted in the increase in speed, but it was not a quick machine to reprogram. Programming changes would take the technicians weeks, and the machine always required long hours of maintenance. As a side note, research on the ENIAC led to many improvements in the vacuum tube.
Contributions of Dr. John Von Neumann
In 1948, Dr. John Von Neumann made several modifications to the ENIAC. The ENIAC had performed arithmetic and transfer operations concurrently, which caused programming difficulties. Von Neumann suggested that using switches to control code selection would make it so that pluggable cable connections could remain fixed. He added a converter code to enable serial operation.
Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation
Eckert and Mauchly's work extended beyond just ENIAC. In 1946, Eckert and Mauchly started the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. In 1949, their company launched the BINAC (BINary Automatic Computer) that used magnetic tape to store data.
In 1950, the Remington Rand Corporation bought the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and changed the name to the Univac Division of Remington Rand. Their research resulted in the UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer), an essential forerunner to today's computers.
In 1955, Remington Rand merged with the Sperry Corporation and formed Sperry-Rand. Eckert remained with the company as an executive and continued with the company when it later merged with the Burroughs Corporation to become Unisys. Eckert and Mauchly both received the IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1980.
The End of the ENIAC
Despite its significant advances in computation in the 1940s, ENIAC's tenure was short. On October 2, 1955, at 11:45 p.m., the power was finally shut off, and the ENIAC was retired. In 1996, precisely 50 years after ENIAC was publicly acknowledged by the government, the massive computer received its place in history. According to the Smithsonian, ENIAC was the center of attention in the city of Philadelphia as they celebrated being the birthplace of computation. ENIAC was ultimately dismantled, with sections of the massive machine on display at both Penn and the Smithsonian.
Contents
Unlike technologies such as the light bulb or the telephone, the Internet has no single “inventor.” Instead, it has evolved over time. The Internet got its start in the United States more than 50 years ago as a government weapon in the Cold War. For years, scientists and researchers used it to communicate and share data with one another. Today, we use the Internet for almost everything, and for many people it would be impossible to imagine life without it.
The Sputnik Scare
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first manmade satellite into orbit. The satellite, known as Sputnik, did not do much: It tumbled aimlessly around in outer space, sending blips and bleeps from its radio transmitters as it circled the Earth. Still, to many Americans, the beach-ball-sized Sputnik was proof of something alarming: While the brightest scientists and engineers in the United States had been designing bigger cars and better television sets, it seemed, the Soviets had been focusing on less frivolous things—and they were going to win the Cold War because of it.
Did you know? Today, almost one-third of the world’s 6.8 billion people use the Internet regularly.
After Sputnik’s launch, many Americans began to think more seriously about science and technology. Schools added courses on subjects like chemistry, physics and calculus. Corporations took government grants and invested them in scientific research and development. And the federal government itself formed new agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), to develop space-age technologies such as rockets, weapons and computers.
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for watching!
The Birth of the ARPAnet
Scientists and military experts were especially concerned about what might happen in the event of a Soviet attack on the nation’s telephone system. Just one missile, they feared, could destroy the whole network of lines and wires that made efficient long-distance communication possible. In 1962, a scientist from M.I.T. and ARPA named J.C.R. Licklider proposed a solution to this problem: a “galactic network” of computers that could talk to one another. Such a network would enable government leaders to communicate even if the Soviets destroyed the telephone system.
In 1965, another M.I.T. scientist developed a way of sending information from one computer to another that he called “packet switching.” Packet switching breaks data down into blocks, or packets, before sending it to its destination. That way, each packet can take its own route from place to place. Without packet switching, the government’s computer network—now known as the ARPAnet—would have been just as vulnerable to enemy attacks as the phone system.
“LOGIN”How Fast Is Your Inventor Pc Really Won
In 1969, ARPAnet delivered its first message: a “node-to-node” communication from one computer to another. (The first computer was located in a research lab at UCLA and the second was at Stanford; each one was the size of a small house.) The message—“LOGIN”—was short and simple, but it crashed the fledgling ARPA network anyway: The Stanford computer only received the note’s first two letters.
The Network Grows
By the end of 1969, just four computers were connected to the ARPAnet, but the network grew steadily during the 1970s. In 1971, it added the University of Hawaii’s ALOHAnet, and two years later it added networks at London’s University College and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norway. As packet-switched computer networks multiplied, however, it became more difficult for them to integrate into a single worldwide “Internet.”
How Fast Is Your Inventor Pc Really Safe
By the end of the 1970s, a computer scientist named Vinton Cerf had begun to solve this problem by developing a way for all of the computers on all of the world’s mini-networks to communicate with one another. He called his invention “Transmission Control Protocol,” or TCP. (Later, he added an additional protocol, known as “Internet Protocol.” The acronym we use to refer to these today is TCP/IP.) One writer describes Cerf’s protocol as “the ‘handshake’ that introduces distant and different computers to each other in a virtual space.”
The World Wide WebHow Fast Is Your Inventor Pc Really Free
Cerf’s protocol transformed the Internet into a worldwide network. Throughout the 1980s, researchers and scientists used it to send files and data from one computer to another. However, in 1991 the Internet changed again. That year, a computer programmer in Switzerland named Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web: an Internet that was not simply a way to send files from one place to another but was itself a “web” of information that anyone on the Internet could retrieve. Berners-Lee created the Internet that we know today.
Since then, the Internet has changed in many ways. In 1992, a group of students and researchers at the University of Illinois developed a sophisticated browser that they called Mosaic. (It later became Netscape.) Mosaic offered a user-friendly way to search the Web: It allowed users to see words and pictures on the same page for the first time and to navigate using scrollbars and clickable links. That same year, Congress decided that the Web could be used for commercial purposes. As a result, companies of all kinds hurried to set up websites of their own, and e-commerce entrepreneurs began to use the Internet to sell goods directly to customers. More recently, social networking sites like Facebook have become a popular way for people of all ages to stay connected.
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