Computing: Birth, growth, exaflops computation and beyond

Abstract

Computing is a generic term implying activities such as design, development, and construction of hardware, firmware, and software systems using a computer or benefitting from it or creating it. Besides, structuring, processing, and managing different types of information, performing scientific/engineering work/research on and with the systems, making the systems behave intelligently, and creating and using communications and entertainment media are some of the applied aspects of computing. Computing comprises the subject areas such as computer science, computer/computational mathematics, and artificial intelligence. Mathematics—tradi-tional/usual, computer/computational, and natural—did exist for millennia. These mathematics are connected intimately with computing explicitly or implicitly. We attempt to record a brief history of birth, growth, exponentially increasing computational power of over quintillion flops related to computing, specifically related to the computer mathematics/science, and beyond. In the process we stress the real-world importance and gigantic differences of computer mathematics over the usual mathematics as well as natural mathematics.