Introduction To Information Technology

SIze Of Computer

2009-09-17T17:49:00.000-07:00

Size of computer

Supercomputer-

is a computer that is at the front line of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research. He then took over the supercomputer market with his new designs, holding the top spot in supercomputing for five years (1985–1990). In the 1980s a large number of smaller competitors entered the market, in parallel to the creation of the minicomputer market a decade earlier, but many of these disappeared in the mid-1990s "supercomputer market crash".

Today, supercomputers are typically one-of-a-kind custom designs produced by "traditional" companies such as Cray, IBM and Hewlett-Packard, who had purchased many of the 1980s companies to gain their experience. As of July 2009^[update], the IBM Roadrunner, located at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is the fastest supercomputer in the world.

The term supercomputer itself is rather fluid, and today's supercomputer tends to become tomorrow's ordinary computer. C DC's early machines were simply very fast scalar processors, some ten times the speed of the fastest machines offered by other companies. In the 1970s most supercomputers were dedicated to running a vector processor, and many of the newer players developed their own such processors at a lower price to enter the market. The early and mid-1980s saw machines with a modest number of vector processors working in parallel to become the standard. Typical numbers of processors were in the range of four to sixteen. In the later 1980s and 1990s, attention turned from vector processors to massive parallel processing systems with thousands of "ordinary" CPUs, some being off the shelf units and others being custom designs. Today, parallel designs are based on "off the shelf" server-class microprocessors, such as the PowerPC, Opteron, or Xeon, and most modern supercomputers are now highly-tuned computer clusters using commodity processors combined with custom interconnects.

Common uses

Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems involving quantum mechanical physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling (computing the structures and properties of chemical compounds, biological macromolecules, polymers, and crystals), physical simulations (such as simulation of airplanes in wind tunnels, simulation of the detonation of nuclear weapons, and research into nuclear fusion), cryptanalysis, and many others. Major universities, military agencies and scientific research laboratories are heavy users.

A particular class of problems, known as Grand Challenge problems, are problems whose full solution requires semi-infinite computing resources.

Relevant here is the distinction between capability computing and capacity computing, as defined by Graham et al. Capability computing is typically thought of as using the maximum computing power to solve a large problem in the shortest amount of time. Often a capability system is able to solve a problem of a size or complexity that no other computer can. Capacity computing in contrast is typically thought of as using efficient cost-effective computing power to solve somewhat large problems or many small problems or to prepare for a run on a capability system.

Supercomputer challenges, technologies

A supercomputer generates large amounts of heat and must be cooled. Cooling most supercomputers is a major HVAC problem.
Information cannot move faster than the speed of light between two parts of a supercomputer. For this reason, a supercomputer that is many metres across must have latencies between its components measured at least in the tens of nanoseconds. Seymour Cray's supercomputer designs attempted to keep cable runs as short as possible for this reason, hence the cylindrical shape of his Cray range of computers. In modern supercomputers built of many conventional CPUs running in parallel, latencies of 1-5 microseconds to send a message between CPUs are typical.
Supercomputers consume and produce massive amounts of data in a very short period of time. According to Ken Batcher, "A supercomputer is a device for turning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems." Much work on external storage bandwidth is needed to ensure that this information can be transferred quickly and stored/retrieved correctly.

Technologies developed for supercomputers include:

Vector processing
Liquid cooling
Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA)
Striped disks (the first instance of what was later called RAID)
Parallel filesystems

Processing techniques

Vector processing techniques were first developed for supercomputers and continue to be used in specialist high-performance applications. Vector processing techniques have trickled down to the mass market in DSP architectures and SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) processing instructions for general-purpose computers.

Modern video game consoles in particular use SIMD extensively and this is the basis for some manufacturers' claim that their game machines are themselves supercomputers. Indeed, some graphics cards have the computing power of several TeraFLOPS. The applications to which this power can be applied was limited by the special-purpose nature of early video processing. As video processing has become more sophisticated, Graphics processing units (GPUs) have evolved to become more useful as general-purpose vector processors, and an entire computer science sub-discipline has arisen to exploit this capability: General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU).

Operating systems

Supercomputers predominantly run some variant of Linux.^[1]

Supercomputer operating systems, today most often variants of Linux,^[1] are at least as complex as those for smaller machines. Historically, their user interfaces tended to be less developed, as the OS developers had limited programming resources to spend on non-essential parts of the OS (i.e., parts not directly contributing to the optimal utilization of the machine's hardware). These computers, often priced at millions of dollars, are sold to a very small market and the R&D budget for the OS was often limited. The advent of Unix and Linux allows reuse of conventional desktop software and user interfaces.

It is interesting to note that this has been a continuing trend throughout the supercomputer industry, with former technology leaders such as Silicon Graphics taking a back seat to such companies as AMD and NVIDIA, who have been able to produce cheap, feature-rich, high-performance, and innovative products due to the vast number of consumers driving their R&D.

Until the early-to-mid-1980s, supercomputers usually sacrificed instruction set compatibility and code portability for performance (processing and memory access speed). For the most part, supercomputers to this time (unlike high-end mainframes) had vastly different operating systems. The Cray-1 alone had at least six different proprietary OSs largely unknown to the general computing community. In similar manner, different and incompatible vectorizing and parallelizing compilers for Fortran existed. This trend would have continued with the ETA-10 were it not for the initial instruction set compatibility between the Cray-1 and the Cray X-MP, and the adoption of UNIX operating system variants (such as Cray's Unicos) and today's Linux.

Programming

The parallel architectures of supercomputers often dictate the use of special programming techniques to exploit their speed. The base language of supercomputer code is, in general, Fortran or C, using special libraries to share data between nodes. In the most common scenario, environments such as PVM and MPI for loosely connected clusters and OpenMP for tightly coordinated shared memory machines are used. Significant effort is required to optimize a problem for the interconnect characteristics of the machine it will be run on; the aim is to prevent any of the CPU's from wasting time waiting on data from other nodes.

Software tools

Software tools for distributed processing include standard APIs such as MPI and PVM, VTL, and open source-based software solutions such as Beowulf, WareWulf, and openMosix, which facilitate the creation of a supercomputer from a collection of ordinary workstations or servers. Technology like ZeroConf (Rendezvous/Bonjour) can be used to create ad hoc computer clusters for specialized software such as Apple's Shake compositing application. An easy programming language for supercomputers remains an open research topic in computer science. Several utilities that would once have cost several thousands of dollars are now completely free thanks to the open source community that often creates disruptive technology

Modern supercomputer Architecture

As of November 2006, the top ten supercomputers on the Top500 list (and indeed the bulk of the remainder of the list) have the same top-level architecture. Each of them is a cluster of MIMD multiprocessors, each processor of which is SIMD. The supercomputers vary radically with respect to the number of multiprocessors per cluster, the number of processors per multiprocessor, and the number of simultaneous instructions per SIMD processor. Within this hierarchy we have:

A computer cluster is a collection of computers that are highly interconnected via a high-speed network or switching fabric. Each computer runs under a separate instance of an Operating System (OS).
A multiprocessing computer is a computer, operating under a single OS and using more than one CPU, wherein the application-level software is indifferent to the number of processors. The processors share tasks using Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA).
A SIMD processor executes the same instruction on more than one set of data at the same time. The processor could be a general purpose commodity processor or special-purpose vector processor. It could also be high-performance processor or a low power processor. As of 2007, the processor executes several SIMD instructions per nanosecond.

As of November 2008 the fastest heterogeneous machine is IBM Roadrunner. This machine is a cluster of 3240 computers, each with 40 processing cores and includes both AMD and Cell processors. The fastest homogeneous machine is the Cray XT5 Jaguar system at National Center for Computational Sciences with more than 19000 computers based on standard AMD processors. By contrast, Columbia is a cluster of 20 machines, each with 512 processors, each of which processes two data streams concurrently.

As of February 2009, IBM has announced work on "Sequoia," which will be a 20 petaflops supercomputer. This will be equivalent to 2 million laptops (whereas Roadrunner is comparable to a mere 100,000 laptops). It is slated for deployment in 2011. ^[2]

Moore's Law and economies of scale are the dominant factors in supercomputer design: a single modern desktop PC is now more powerful than a ten-year-old supercomputer, and the design concepts that allowed past supercomputers to out-perform contemporaneous desktop machines have now been incorporated into commodity PCs. Furthermore, the costs of chip development and production make it uneconomical to design custom chips for a small run and favor mass-produced chips that have enough demand to recoup the cost of production. A current model quad-core Xeon workstation running at 2.66 GHz will outperform a multimillion dollar Cray C90 supercomputer used in the early 1990s; most workloads requiring such a supercomputer in the 1990s can now be done on workstations costing less than 4,000 US dollars. Supercomputing is taking a step of increasing density, allowing for Desktop Supercomputers to become available, offering the computer power that in 1998 required a large room to require less than a Desktop footprint.

In addition, many problems carried out by supercomputers are particularly suitable for parallelization (in essence, splitting up into smaller parts to be worked on simultaneously) and, in particular, fairly coarse-grained parallelization that limits the amount of information that needs to be transferred between independent processing units. For this reason, traditional supercomputers can be replaced, for many applications, by "clusters" of computers of standard design, which can be programmed to act as one large computer.

IBM Roadrunner - LANL

The CPU Architecture Share of Top500 Rankings between 1993 and 2009: x86 family includes x86-64.

Special-purpose supercomputers

Special-purpose supercomputers are high-performance computing devices with a hardware architecture dedicated to a single problem. This allows the use of specially programmed FPGA chips or even custom VLSI chips, allowing higher price/performance ratios by sacrificing generality. They are used for applications such as astrophysics computation and brute-force codebreaking. Historically a new special-purpose supercomputer has occasionally been faster than the world's fastest general-purpose supercomputer, by some measure. For example, GRAPE-6 was faster than the Earth Simulator in 2002 for a particular special set of problems.

Examples of special-purpose supercomputers:

Belle, Deep Blue, and Hydra, for playing chess
Reconfigurable computing machines or parts of machines
GRAPE, for astrophysics and molecular dynamics
Deep Crack, for breaking the DES cipher
MDGRAPE-3, for protein structure computation
D.E. Shaw Research Anton, for simulating molecular dynamics

The fastest supercomputers

measuring supercomputer speed

In general, the speed of a supercomputer is measured in "FLOPS" (FLoating Point Operations Per Second), commonly used with an SI prefix such as tera-, combined into the shorthand "TFLOPS" ( $1012$ FLOPS, pronounced teraflops), or peta-, combined into the shorthand "PFLOPS" ( $1015$ FLOPS, pronounced petaflops.) This measurement is based on a particular benchmark, which does LU decomposition of a large matrix. This mimics a class of real-world problems, but is significantly easier to compute than a majority of actual real-world problems.

"Petascale" supercomputers can process one quadrilion ( $1015$ ) (1000 trillion) FLOPS. Exascale is computing performance in the exaflops range. An exaflop is one quintillion ( $1018$ ) FLOPS (one million teraflops).

The Top500 list

Main article: TOP500

Since 1993, the fastest supercomputers have been ranked on the Top500 list according to their LINPACK benchmark results. The list does not claim to be unbiased or definitive, but it is a widely cited current definition of the "fastest" supercomputer available at any given time.

Current fastest supercomputer system

A Blue Gene/P node card

On June 8, 2008, the Cell/AMD Opteron-based IBM Roadrunner at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was announced as the fastest operational supercomputer, with a sustained processing rate of 1.026 PFLOPS.^[4] The Roadrunner hardware and software was then optimized and the benchmark was re-run and submitted for the November 2008 TOP500 with an Rmax of 1.105 PFLOPS, barely surviving a challenge from the Cray XT5 Jaguar to remain the fastest computer on the "official" list.^[5]

Quasi-supercomputing

Some types of large-scale distributed computing for embarrassingly parallel problems take the clustered supercomputing concept to an extreme.

The fastest, Folding@home, reported over 8.5 petaflops of processing power as of May, 2009. Of this, 2.5 petaflops of this processing power is contributed by clients running on PlayStation 3 systems and another 5.3 petaflops is contributed by their newly released GPU2 client.^[6]

Another distributed computing project BOINC platform, a host for a number of distributed computing projects. As of July 2009^[update], BOINC recorded a processing power of over 2.0 petaflops through over 530,000 active computers on the network.^[7] One such project, SETI@home, reported processing power of over 508 teraflops through almost 317,000 active computers.^[8]

As of July 2009^[update], GIMPS's distributed Mersenne Prime search currently achieves about 40 teraflops.^[9]

Also a “quasi-supercomputer” is Google's search engine system with estimated total processing power of between 126 and 316 teraflops, as of April 2004.^[10] In June 2006 the New York Times estimated that the Googleplex and its server farms contain 450,000 servers.^[11] According to recent estimations, the processing power of Google's cluster might reach from 20 to 100 petaflops.^[12]

The PlayStation 3 Gravity Grid uses a network of 16 machines, and exploits the Cell processor for the intended application, which is binary black hole coalescence using perturbation theory.^[13]^[14] The Cell processor has a main CPU and 6 floating-point vector processors, giving the machine a net of 16 general-purpose machines and 96 vector processors. The machine has a one-time cost of $9,000 to build and is adequate for black-hole simulations, which would otherwise cost $6,000 per run on a conventional supercomputer. The black hole calculations are not memory-intensive and are highly localizable, and so are well-suited to this architecture.

Other notable computer clusters are the flash mob cluster and the Beowulf cluster. The flash mob cluster allows the use of any computer in the network, while the Beowulf cluster still requires uniform architecture.

Research and development

Futurist Ray Kurzweil's projected supercomputer processing power

IBM is developing the Cyclops64 architecture, intended to create a "supercomputer on a chip".

Other PFLOPS projects include one by Narendra Karmarkar in India,^[15] a CDAC effort targeted for 2010,^[16] and the Blue Waters Petascale Computing System funded by the NSF ($200 million) that is being built by the NCSA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (slated to be completed by 2011).^[17]

In May 2008 a collaboration was announced between NASA, SGI and Intel to build a 1 petaflops computer, Pleiades, in 2009, scaling up to 10 PFLOPs by 2012.^[18] Meanwhile, IBM is constructing a 20 PFLOPs supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, named Sequoia, which is scheduled to go online in 2011.

Given the current speed of progress, supercomputers are projected to reach 1 exaflops ( $1018$ ) (one quintillion FLOPS) in 2019.^[19] Futurist Ray Kurzweil expects supercomputers capable of human brain neural simulations, for which according to Kurzweil 10 exaflops ( $1019$ ) would be required, in 2025.

Erik P. DeBenedictis of Sandia National Laboratories theorizes that a zettaflops ( $1021$ ) (one sextillion FLOPS) computer is required to accomplish full weather modeling, which could cover a two week time span accurately.^[20] Such systems might be built around 2030.^[21]

Punch card-
or punched card (or punchcard or Hollerith card or IBM card), is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Now almost an obsolete recording medium, punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century for controlling textile looms and in the late 19th and early 20th century for operating fairground organs and related instruments. They were used through the 20th century in unit record machines for input, processing, and data storage. Early digital computers used punched cards as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data, with offline data entry on key punch machines. Some voting machines use punched cards.

[edit] History

Hexadecimal numbers

2009-09-13T00:12:00.000-07:00

Hexadecimal numbers

When you are working with computers, and especially the Internet and the Web, you will eventually run into things like the above - - - Hexadecimal (HEX) Numbers.

The following will not pretend to make you a Hex math genius, but we will explain just what those funny letters mean.

When people evolved, they did so with ten fingers. (Yes we do have a few folks down in Horsepasture with 11 fingers and 12 toes, but that's social commentary, not math.)

Since we have ten fingers, and since early man probably used them as the first counting device, we learned to count in TENs. DECI, Latin for Ten, gave birth to the term DECImal.

Decimal numbers are based on POWERS of Ten.

1 x 10 = 10 10 x 10 = 100, 10 x 10 x 10 = 1,000 etc.

Since everything is based on Tens, we only need Ten Digits to represent every possible number.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0
Note: The Romans had no number for, or possibly even the concept of Zero

So, let's start counting up from Zero in Decimal . . .

0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - OOPS - We're Out of Digits!

Since we ran out of digits, we need to do a bit of trickery to represent numbers higher than 9. What we do is start over with Zero as the rightmost digit, and put a One (1) to it's left. ---- 10 - 11 - 12 ... 18 - 19 - 20 - etc.

The "Decimal Place Holders" are all Powers of Ten

The rightmost digit tells us how many ONES are in the number.

The next digit to the left tells us how many TENS, the next, how many HUNDREDS, etc. Take the number 14, 728

How the Brain Decodes a Decimal Number

Powers of Ten	10,000s	1,000s	100's	10's	Ones
	1	4	7	2	8

To "Decode" this number, the brain subconsiously goes . . .

There is one Ten Thousand, Four One Thousands,
Seven One Hundreds, Two Tens and Eight Ones
Add them all together and you get 14,728

10,000	x	1	=	10,000
1,000	x	4	=	4,000
100	x	7	=	700
10	x	2	=	20
8	x	1	=	8
			+
14, 728

That's how modern number systems work!

Now a fact, a question and a conclusion.

Fact: For reasons best left to people with Pocket Protectors and no personal skills, computers like to "Think" in 'groups' of EIGHT digits instead of Ten.

Question: What if people had evolved with Eight fingers per hand instead of Five?

Conclusion: We'd have developed a number system based on powers of Sixteen rather than powers of Ten

THAT is exactly what the HEXadecimal number system is, a number system based on 16's, not tens.

Let's start counting upwards from Zero in Hex . . .

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - OOPS - Out of Digits again, but we don't do the add a Zero and scoot stuff over until we get to 16.

Where do you get the additional digits?
You Dont -- You Use Letters!

Dec	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	...	24	25	26	27
Hex	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F	10	11	12	13	14	...	18	19	1A	1B

Let's Decode the Hex Number F2A4C= 993,868

Powers of 16	65,536's	4096's	256's	16's	Ones
	F	2	A	4	C

To "Decode" this number, the NERD BRAIN
(Or Calculator More Likely) consciously thinks . . .

65,536	x	F	=	983,040
4,096	x	2	=	8,192
256	x	A	=	2,560
16	x	4	=	64
1	x	C	=	12
			+
993,868

IF YOU'RE LOST,
DON'T FRET OVER IT!

There's no real need for you to take pencil in hand to figure this stuff out.
IF you ever need to, you'll find handy Hex/Decimal calculators are supplied with both Windows and the Mac OS.

Also, at the moment, it's only important that you have a passing familiarity with this (and the Binary - Powers of Two) number system.

Let's Examine a Typical Browser Color Code.

FF33CC">

In our discussion of Hexadecimal Color Codes we explained that the above is called a TRIPLET, or group of THREE Numbers. (FF, 33 and cc)

Colors are specified by how much RED (from Zero to 255), Green (from Zero to 255) and Blue (from Zero to 255) are in the final color.

We must, however, specify these color values in Hex.

FF 33 CC Is Therefore . . .

FF (Hex) = 255 (Decimal) Points of Red
33 (Hex) = 51 (Decimal) Poinrs of Green
CC (Hex) = 204 (Decimal) Points of Blue

The Result Is This Color

Again please let me state that in the beginning, a passing familiarity with these number systems is all you need. At least you should no longer be intimidated when some piece of software asks you to enter something in Hex.

Interesting Fact: The fact that computers use alternate number systems explains why 1K (1000) in Computerese is REALLY 1,024 and 4K (4000) is Really 4,096. We're NOT working with even powers of Ten, but powers of Two.

Here Is A Handy Hex to Decimal and Binary Conversion Chart

EBCDIC CODE

2009-09-13T00:07:00.000-07:00

EBCDIC CODE
EBCDIC was devised in 1963 and 1964 by IBM and was announced with the release of the IBM System/360 line of mainframe computers. It was created to extend the Binary-Coded Decimal encoding that existed at the time. It is an 8-bit character encoding, in contrast to, and developed separately from, the 7-bit ASCII encoding scheme.

While IBM was a chief proponent of the ASCII standardization committee, they did not have time to prepare ASCII peripherals (such as card punch machines) to ship with its System/360 computers, so the company settled on EBCDIC at the time. The System/360 became wildly successful, and thus so did EBCDIC.

All IBM mainframe peripherals and operating systems (except Linux on zSeries or iSeries) use EBCDIC as their inherent encoding,^[1] but software can translate to and from other encodings. Many hardware peripherals provide translation as well and modern mainframes (such as IBM zSeries) include processor instructions, at the hardware level, to accelerate translation between character sets.

At the time it was devised, EBCDIC made it relatively easy to enter data into a computer with punch cards. Since punch cards are no longer used on mainframes, EBCDIC is used in modern mainframes primarily for backwards compatibility. It does have an advantage of limiting the number of hole punches per column to 2 holes for uppercase and numbers, which increases the durability of these punch cards as they are handled by a card reader. This encoding is also known as Hollerith code. ^[2]

EBCDIC has no modern technical advantage over ASCII-based code pages such as the ISO-8859 series or Unicode. There are some technical niceties in each, e.g., ASCII and EBCDIC both have one bit which indicates upper or lower case. But there are some aspects of EBCDIC which make it much less pleasant to work with than ASCII (such as a non-contiguous alphabet). As with single-byte extended ASCII codepages, most EBCDIC codepages only allow up to 2 languages (English and one other language) to be used in a database or text file.

Where true support for multilingual text is desired, a system supporting far more characters is needed. Generally this is done with some form of Unicode support. There is an EBCDIC Unicode Transformation Format called UTF-EBCDIC proposed by the Unicode consortium, but it is not intended to be used in open interchange environments and, even on EBCDIC-based systems, it is almost never used. IBM mainframes support UTF-16, but they do not support UTF-EBCDIC natively.

Arabic EBCDIC versions are typically in presentation order, in left to right order as displayed by an older mainframe or line printer, rather than in the right to left logical order used by modern encodings such as Unicode.

EBCDIC Table

Dec	Hex	Code	Dec	Hex	Code	Dec	Hex	Code	Dec	Hex	Code
0	00	NUL	32	20		64	40	space	96	60	-
1	01	SOH	33	21		65	41		97	61	/
2	02	STX	34	22		66	42		98	62
3	03	ETX	35	23		67	43		99	63
4	04		36	24		68	44		100	64
5	05	HT	37	25	LF	69	45		101	65
6	06		38	26	ETB	70	46		102	66
7	07	DEL	39	27	ESC	71	47		103	67
8	08		40	28		72	48		104	68
9	09		41	29		73	49		105	69
10	0A		42	2A		74	4A	[	106	6A	\|
11	0B	VT	43	2B		75	4B	.	107	6B	,
12	0C	FF	44	2C		76	4C	<	108	6C	%
13	0D	CR	45	2D	ENQ	77	4D	(	109	6D	_
14	0E	SO	46	2E	ACK	78	4E	+	110	6E	>
15	0F	SI	47	2F	BEL	79	4F	\| !	111	6F	?
16	10	DLE	48	30		80	50	&	112	70
17	11		49	31		81	51		113	71
18	12		50	32	SYN	82	52		114	72
19	13		51	33		83	53		115	73
20	14		52	34		84	54		116	74
21	15		53	35		85	55		117	75
22	16	BS	54	36		86	56		118	76
23	17		55	37	EOT	87	57		119	77
24	18	CAN	56	38		88	58		120	78
25	19	EM	57	39		89	59		121	79	‘
26	1A		58	3A		90	5A	! ]	122	7A	:
27	1B		59	3B		91	5B	$	123	7B	#
28	1C	IFS	60	3C		92	5C	*	124	7C	@
29	1D	IGS	61	3D	NAK	93	5D	)	125	7D	‘
30	1E	IRS	62	3E		94	5E	;	126	7E	=
31	1F	IUS	63	3F	SUB	95	5F	^	127	7F	"

Dec	Hex	Code	Dec	Hex	Code	Dec	Hex	Code	Dec	Hex	Code
128	80		160	A0		192	C0	{	224	E0	\
129	81	a	161	A1	~	193	C1	A	225	E1
130	82	b	162	A2	s	194	C2	B	226	E2	S
131	83	c	163	A3	t	195	C3	C	227	E3	T
132	84	d	164	A4	u	196	C4	D	228	E4	U
133	85	e	165	A5	v	197	C5	E	229	E5	V
134	86	f	166	A6	w	198	C6	F	230	E6	W
135	87	g	167	A7	x	199	C7	G	231	E7	X
136	88	h	168	A8	y	200	C8	H	232	E8	Y
137	89	i	169	A9	z	201	C9	I	233	E9	Z
138	8A		170	AA		202	CA		234	EA
139	8B		171	AB		203	CB		235	EB
140	8C		172	AC		204	CC		236	EC
141	8D		173	AD		205	CD		237	ED
142	8E		174	AE		206	CE		238	EE
143	8F		175	AF		207	CF		239	EF
144	90		176	B0		208	D0	}	240	F0	0
145	91	j	177	B1		209	D1	J	241	F1	1
146	92	k	178	B2		210	D2	K	242	F2	2
147	93	l	179	B3		211	D3	L	243	F3	3
148	94	m	180	B4		212	D4	M	244	F4	4
149	95	n	181	B5		213	D5	N	245	F5	5
150	96	o	182	B6		214	D6	O	246	F6	6
151	97	p	183	B7		215	D7	P	247	F7	7
152	98	q	184	B8		216	D8	Q	248	F8	8
153	99	r	185	B9		217	D9	R	249	F9	9
154	9A		186	BA		218	DA		250	FA
155	9B		187	BB		219	DB		251	FB
156	9C		188	BC		220	DC		252	FC
157	9D		189	BD		221	DD		253	FD
158	9E		190	BE		222	DE		254	FE
159	9F		191	BF		223	DF		255	FF

ASCII CODES

2009-09-12T23:44:00.000-07:00

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Computers can only understand numbers, so an ASCII code is the numerical representation of a character such as 'a' or '@' or an action of some sort. ASCII was developed a long time ago and now the non-printing characters are rarely used for their original purpose. Below is the ASCII character table and this includes descriptions of the first 32 non-printing characters. ASCII was actually designed for use with teletypes and so the descriptions are somewhat obscure. If someone says they want your CV however in ASCII format, all this means is they want 'plain' text with no formatting such as tabs, bold or underscoring - the raw format that any computer can understand. This is usually so they can easily import the file into their own applications without issues. Notepad.exe creates ASCII text, or in MS Word you can save a file as 'text only'

ASCII codes table - Format of standard characters

ASCII	Hex	Symbol

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15	0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F	NUL SOH STX ETX EOT ENQ ACK BEL BS TAB LF VT FF CR SO SI

ASCII	Hex	Symbol

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1A 1B 1C 1D 1E 1F	DLE DC1 DC2 DC3 DC4 NAK SYN ETB CAN EM SUB ESC FS GS RS US

ASCII	Hex	Symbol

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79	40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 4A 4B 4C 4D 4E 4F	@ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O

ASCII	Hex	Symbol

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95	50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 5A 5B 5C 5D 5E 5F	P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _

ASCII	Hex	Symbol

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47	20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 2A 2B 2C 2D 2E 2F	(space) ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /

ASCII	Hex	Symbol

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63	30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 3A 3B 3C 3D 3E 3F	0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?

ASCII	Hex	Symbol

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111	60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 6A 6B 6C 6D 6E 6F	` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o

ASCII	Hex	Symbol

112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127	70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 7A 7B 7C 7D 7E 7F	p q r s t u v w x y z { \| } ~

Octal Number System

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Just as the decimal system with its ten digits is a base-ten system, the octal number system with its 8 digits, ‘0’, ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘4’, ‘5’, ‘6’ and ‘7’, is a base-eight system. Table 2-4 shows the weighting for the octal number system up to 3 decimal places before and 2 decimal places after the octal point (.).

Weights

8²

8¹

8⁰

.

8^-1

8^-2

Table 2-4 Octal Weights

Just like the other counting conventions discussed previously, the LSB is begins with zero (0) and is incremented until the maximum digit value is reached. The adjacent bit positions are then filled appropriately as the iterative counting process continues. Thus the counting convention for octal is 0,1,2,3,4,5,7,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,20….

Conversion from Octal to Decimal

To express the value of a given octal number as its decimal equivalent we just need to sum the digits after each has been multiplied by its associated weight.

Example #1

Convert (237.04) ₈ to decimal form.

Weights	8²	8¹	8⁰	8^-1
Octal Number	2	3	7	0
Decimal Value	128	24	7	0	Total (159.0625)₁₀

Conversion from Decimal Whole Numbers to Octal

To convert from Decimal whole numbers to Octal we may use the systematic approach called the Repeated-Division-by-8 method shown in the example below.

Converting (359)₁₀ to Octal

Divide the quotient by eight and record the remainder.

Repeat step (a) until the quotient is equal to zero (0).

The first remainder produced is the LSB in the octal number and the last remainder (R) the MSB. Accordingly, the octal number is then written (from left to right) with the MSB occurring first


8	359
8	44	R 7 (LSB)
8	5	R 4
8	0	R 5 (MSB)

Therefore, (359)₁₀ = (547)₈

Converting Decimal Fractions to Octal

The techniques used to convert decimal fractions to octal are similar to the methods demonstrated previously to convert decimal fractions to binary numbers. We may either use the sum-of–weights method or the repeated multiplication–by-8 method. In the multiplication–by-8 method we repeatedly multiply the fraction by eight, and record the carry, until the fraction product is zero. The first carry produced is the MSB, while the last carry is the LSM. Remember that the octal point precedes the MSB. To illustrate lets consider the conversion of (0.3125)₁₀ to octal.

0.3125 * 8

Carry

0.5 * 8

2 (MSB)

0.0

4 (LSB)

thus, (0.3125)₁₀ = (0.24)₈

Converting Octal to Binary

The primary application of octal numbers is representing binary numbers, as it is easier to read large numbers in octal form that in binary form. Because each octal digit can be represented by a three-bit binary number (see Table 2-5), it is very easy to convert from octal to binary. Simply replace each octal digit with the appropriate three-bit binary number as indicated in the examples below.

Octal Digit	Binary Digit
0	000
1	001
2	010
3	011
4	100
5	101
6	110
7	111

Example #1 Table 2-5 Octal and Binary Numbers

13 ₈ = (001011) ₂

(37.12) ₈ = (011111. 001010) ₂

Converting Binary to Octal

Converting binary to octal is also a simple process. Break the binary digits into groups of three starting from the binary point and convert each group into its appropriate octal digit. For whole numbers, it may be necessary to add a zero as the MSB in order to complete a grouping of three bits. Note that this does not change the value of the binary number. Similarly, when representing fractions, it may be necessary to add a trailing zero in the LSB in order to form a complete grouping of three.

Examples:

Converting (010111)₂ to Octal

111 = 7 (LSB)

010 = 2 (MSB)

thus, (010111)₂ = (27) ₈

Converting (0.110101)₂ to Octal

110 = 6 (MSB)

111 = 5 (LSB)

thus, (0.110101)₂ = (0.65) ₈

Binary Number System

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Binary Number System

A Binary Number is made up of only 0s and 1s.

This is 1×8 + 1×4 + 0×2 + 1 + 1×(1/2) + 0×(1/4) + 1×(1/8)
(=13.625 in Decimal)

Similar to the Decimal System, numbers can be placed to the left or right of the point, to indicate values greater than one or less than one. For Binary Numbers:

	The number just to the left of the point is a whole number, we call this place units. As we move left, every number place gets 2 times bigger.

	The first digit on the right of the point means halves (1/2). As we move further right, every number place gets 2 times smaller (one half as big).

2 Different Values

Because you can only have 0s or 1s, this is how you count using Binary:

Decimal:	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Binary:	0	1	10	11	100	101	110	111	1000	1001	1010	1011	1100	1101	1110	1111

"Binary is as easy as 1, 10, 11."

Here are some more equivalent values:

Decimal:	20	25	30	40	50	100	200	500
Binary:	10100	11001	11110	101000	110010	1100100	11001000	111110100

Definition of Binary

	The word binary* comes from "Bi-" meaning two. We see "bi-" in words such as "bicycle" (two wheels) or "binocular" (two eyes).*

	When you say a binary number, pronounce each digit (example, the binary number "101" is spoken as "one zero one", or sometimes "one-oh-one"). This way people don't get confused with the decimal number.

Bits

A single binary digit (like "0" or "1") is called a "bit". For example 11010 is five bits long.

The word bit is made up from the words "binary digit"

How to Show that a Number is Binary

To show that a number is a binary number, follow it with a little 2 like this: 101₂

This way people won't think it is the decimal number "101" (one hundred and one).

Examples

Example 1: What is 1111₂ in Decimal?

The "1" on the left is in the "2×2×2" position, so that means 1×2×2×2 (=8)
The next "1" is in the "2×2" position, so that means 1×2×2 (=4)
The next "1" is in the "2" position, so that means 1×2 (=2)
The last "1" is in the units position, so that means 1
Answer: 1111 = 8+4+2+1 = 15 in Decimal

Example 2: What is 1001₂ in Decimal?

The "1" on the left is in the "2×2×2" position, so that means 1×2×2×2 (=8)
The "0" is in the "2×2" position, so that means 0×2×2 (=0)
The next "0" is in the "2" position, so that means 0×2 (=0)
The last "1" is in the units position, so that means 1
Answer: 1001 = 8+0+0+1 = 9 in Decimal

Example 3: What is 1.1₂ in Decimal?

The "1" on the left side is in the units position, so that means 1.
The 1 on the right side is in the "halves" position, so that means 1×(1/2)
So, 1.1 is "1 and 1 half" = 1.5 in Decimal

Example 4: What is 10.11₂ in Decimal?

The "1" is in the "2" position, so that means 1×2 (=2)
The "0" is in the units position, so that means 0
The "1" on the right of the point is in the "halves" position, so that means 1×(1/2)
The last "1" on the right side is in the "quarters" position, so that means 1×(1/4)
So, 10.11 is 2+0+1/2+1/4 = 2.75 in Decimal

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Information Technology

Information Technology – A Definition.......

We use the term information technology or IT to refer to an entire industry. In actuality, information technology is the use of computers and software to manage information. In some companies, this is referred to as Management Information Services (or MIS) or simply as Information Services (or IS). The information technology department of a large company would be responsible for storing information, protecting information, processing the information, transmitting the information as necessary, and later retrieving information as necessary.

History of Information Technology......

In relative terms, it wasn't long ago that the Information Technology department might have consisted of a single Computer Operator, who might be storing data on magnetic tape, and then putting it in a box down in the basement somewhere. The history of information technology is fascinating! Check out these history of information technology resources for information on everything from the history of IT to electronics inventions and even the top 10 IT bugs.

Modern Information Technology Departments.......

In order to perform the complex functions required of information technology departments today, the modern Information Technology Department would use computers, servers, database management systems, and cryptography. The department would be made up of several System Administrators, Database Administrators and at least one Information...

History Of Computer

The development of the modern day computer was the result of advances in technologies and man's need to quantify. Papyrus helped early man to record language and numbers. The abacus was one of the first counting machines. .
Some of the earlier mechanical counting machines lacked the technology to make the design work. For instance, some had parts made of wood prior to metal manipulation and manufacturing. Imagine the wear on wooden gears. This history of computers site includes the names of early pioneers of math and computing and links to related sites about the History of Computers, for further study. This site would be a good Web adjunct to accompany any book on the History of Computers or Introduction to Computers. The "H" Section includes a link to the History of the Web Beginning at CERN which includes Bibliography and Related Links. Hitmill.com strives to always include related links for a broader educational experience. The material was originally divided into Part 1 & Part 2

information

Information as a concept has a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation.

data

Data are pieces of information that represent the qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data (plural of "datum", which is seldom used) are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which information and knowledge are derived

GeneraTion Of Computer

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FIRST GENERATION

1975 - First implementation of BASIC by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, it was written for the MITS Altair - the first personal computer - this led to the formation of Microsoft later in the year.

1976 - Apple Computer, Inc. founded, to Market Apple I computer. Designed by Stephen Wozinak and Stephen Jobs.

1977 - May Apple II computer introduced.

1972 - MITS Altair 8800, the first personal computer to be available commercially released, by Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems.
200 kilohertz
3,500 transistors
16 kbytes
Uses: dumb terminals, calculators, bottling machines
data/character manipulation.

1974-7 - Intel 8088
ISA 8 bit data bus
Processor speed 4.77 MHz
6,000 transistors
RAM 64 kbytes
Uses: Traffic light controller.

From the Intel Museum

1978 - Intel 8086, AMD 8086, NEC V-30
8 and 10 bit data bus
Processor Speed 8, 10 MHz instruction
29,000 transistors
Use: portable computing.

1980 - "DOS addresses only 1 Megabyte of RAM because we cannot imagine any applications needing more." Microsoft on the development of DOS. Instruction set of 300 operations, had 29,000 transistors

1979 - Arcade Video game ‘Space Invaders’ released.
1980 - Atari’s Asteroids.

1979 - Compact disk was invented.

SECOND GENERATION

1982 - Intel 80286, AMD 286, 186S
16 bit ISA data bus
Processor Speed 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 20 MHz
134,000 transistors
RAM 16 MB
CPU square PGA (Pin Grid Array) with pin 1 identified by a small notch soldered or surface mounted on the motherboard
ISA slots
Use: Microprocessor.

12MHz 80286 Motherboard
6 16 bit expansion slots, two eight bit slots.

1982 - The TCP/IP Protocol established, and the "Internet" is formed as a connected set of networks using TCP/IP.

From the Intel Museum

THIRD GENERATION

1984 - Compaq started the development of the IDE interface (Intelligent Drive Electronics).
1985 - CD-ROM, invented by Phillips, produced in collaboration with Sony.

1987 - IBM PS/2 family
Introduced MCA 32 bit bus

1985-9 - Intel 80386DX, AMD, CYRIX
32 bit external data bus, 32 bit Address Bus
Processor Speed 16, 20. 25. 33, 40 MHz
4 GIG Memory
386 Protected Mode (Virtual Memory)
132 Pin PGA, 132 Pin Socket
275,000 transistors
CPU PGA
Multitask DOS programs
MCA (Micro Channel Archtecture), EISA (Extended Industry Standard Architecture), ISA expansion slots
Use: Desktop Computing

From the Intel Museum

1987 - Macintosh II & Macintosh SE released. The SE was still based on the 68000, but could cope with 4 Mb of RAM and had a SCSI adapter, similar specifications to the Macintosh Plus of Jan. 1986.

1987 - 32 Bit Bus Width: The MCA bus features a full 32 bit bus width, the same width as the VESA and PCI local buses. It had far superior throughput to the ISA bus.It included:

Bus Mastering: The MCA bus supported bus mastering adapters for greater efficiency, including proper bus arbitration.

Plug and Play: MCA automatically configured adapter cards, so there was no need to fiddle with jumpers. This was eight years before Windows 95 brought PnP into the mainstream! This was created by IBM for their PS/2 machines.

MCA had a great deal of potential. Unfortunately, IBM made two decisions that would doom MCA to utter failure in the marketplace.

First, they made MCA incompatible with ISA; this means ISA cards will not work at all in an MCA system.

Second, IBM made the MCA proprietory.

1988 - EISA Bus standard introduced by Compaq. EISA was ISA compatible and had all the elements of MCA, but it was expensive, and there were not as many cards for EISA.

1988-92 - Intel 80386SX, AMD, CYRIX
15 bit data bus
Processor Speed 16, 20, 25, 33 MHz
16 MB Memory
132 Pin PGA, 132 Pin Socket

FOURTH GENERATION GUI (Graphic Users Interface) Interface - Level 1 Cache

1989 - Macintosh SE/30 released.

1989 - Release of Sound Blaster Card, by Creative Labs.

1989 - World Wide Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee who saw the need for a global information exchange that would allow physicists to collaborate on research (he was working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland, at the time). 1990 - Windows 3.0 released by Bill Gates & Microsoft. Mosaic the only brower used.

1990 - Macintosh Classic and IIsi released. 68030 processor at 20 MHz, 256 colors video adapter.
Macintosh LC released. 8020 processor at 16 MHz.

1989-91 - Intel 80486DX, AMD, CYRIX
32 bit data bus
Processor Speed 25, 33, 50 MHz
4 GIG Memory
168 Pin PGA, 168 Pin Socket, 1, 2, 3 1.2 million transistors
From command level to point and click
ISA, EISA, MCA expansion slots
CPU PGA, 168 piins, @ 1.75 square
Operates at +5 V, DX operates at 3.3 VDC
A built-in math coprocessor, which speeds up computing because it offers complex math functions from the central processor
Use: Desktop computing.

From the Intel Museum

DX2 - Overdrive chips runs at 2 clock speeds for internal, one for external operations.

DX4, DX4-100 - Clock tripler technology (called Blue Lightening; i.e., a 25 MHz chip could run internally at 75 MHz.

1990 - Macintosh Classic released

1990 - PCI introduced.

1990 - ISA expanded to 16 bits.

1990 - VESA bus created. The VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) Local Bus was invented at around the time that the 486 was introduced. As a result, the majority of 486-based motherboards are based on VESA (VLB, VL-bus) designs.

1990 - Windows 3.1 released by Bill Gates & Microsoft.

1992 - Wolfenstein 3D released by Id Software Inc.

1992 - Intel 80486DX2, 80486DX2 Overdrive (for upgrading)
Clock Doubling
Processor Speed 50, 66, 80 MHz

1993 - Doom was released by Id Software Inc.
1994 - Doom II released.

1991-2 - Intel 80486SX, AMD, CYRIX , Level 2 Cache
Processor Speed 26, 20, 25, 33 MHz
No Math Coprocessor

1994 - Netscape 1.0 was written as an alternative browser to NCSA Mosaic.

1994 - Intel 80486DX4 and 80486DX4 Overdrive
Clock Tripling
Processor Speed 75, 100, 120 MHz

1995 - Intel 80486DX5, AMD 5X86
Processor Speed 133 MHz

1996 - Quake released.

1996 - Cyrix 5X86
Processor Speed 100 MHz X 50 MHz bus, 120 MHz,110 MHz X 55 Mhz bus, 133 MHz X 66 MHz bus, 150 MHz X 75 MHz bus
Pentium compatible, since it fitted into a Socket 7

FIFTH GENERATION

PCI Bus

1993-6 - Intel Pentium(P5 [5 vol]), P54C[3.3 volt]) - Developed by Intel in Haifa, Israel, 1993
64 bit internal and external data bus
3.1 million transistors
BiPolar CMOS
RAM 4 GIG
Processor Speed 50, 60(1993), 66(1993), 75(1994-5), 90(1994), 100(1994), 120(1995), 133(1995), 150(1996), 166(1996), 200(1997) - all 60-66 MHz motherboard speed
CPU - 1.94 inches square SPGA, 273 pins work at 5 VDC, 296 pins operate at 3.3 VDC
Socket 4, 5, 7
Can process 4 instructions per clock cycle
2 8K cache
superscaler - CPU is 2 chips in one for fault tolerant technology - one chip falters, another takes over
Incorporated "real world" data such as speech, sound, handwriting and photographic images

430LX - Mercury:
50-66 MHz bus- 64 kb cache - Socket 4 - 128 MB RAMZ
430NX - Neptune:
50-66 MHz bus - 512 secondary cache - 512 RAM
430FX - Triton:
90-103 MHz - 128 MB RAM - started support for EDO RAM - PCI
over 3.1 million transistors.
430HX - Triton II:
90-103 MHz - 512 RAM - 512 cache, TAG RAM - PCI - USB
The 430HX was the only current Intel Pentium-class chipset to offer parity and error corrected memory support. This makes it the only choice (as far as this author is concerned) for mission critical applications, servers, etc., unless you want to use a non-Intel chipset. Unfortunately, the HX chipset has now been discontinued, which means that choices are becoming much more limited.
430VX - Triton III:
128 MB RAM - 64 MG RAM - support for SDRAM (SIMM & DIMM)
430TX - Triton IV:
256 MB RAM - 64 MB cache - (SIMM & DIMM)
(1997)

K5
Pentium copy
16 KB L1 cache and no MMX</p>

Intel Pentium OverDrive
32, 64 Data bus
296 Pin SPGA, "Socket 7"
Processor Speed 63, 83, 120/133, 125, 150, 166

MMX

Adds 57 new instructions for multimedia and internal improvements to support instructions

Required new motherboard becuase of Split Voltage - 2.8V for internal logic - 3.3V for I/O logic

SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data): allows one instruction to perform the same function on multiple pieces of data

more cache built into chip

1996 - January Netscape Navigator 2.0 released. First browser to support JavaScript.

1997 - Intel Pentium with MMX(P55C)
Split Rail Voltage
Processor Speed 166, 200, 233 MHz

1997 - "Grand Theft Auto", "Quake 2" and "Blade Runner" were all released while Lara Croft returned in "Tomb Raider 2". As the standards for graphics kept increasing, 3d graphics cards were beginning to become mandatory for games players.

1997 - After 18 months of losses Apple were in serious financial trouble.

1997 - Intel Pentium with MMX Overdrive
Processor Speed 125, 150, 166, 180, 200 MHz

1998 - Intel Celeron Processor
266, 300, 333, 366, 400, 433, 466(1999), 500(1999)
Use: Low-cost PC's

1995-6 - CYRIX 6X86 (M1) - Incompatibilities, Overheated, etc.
Processor Speed 120+, 133+, 150+, 166+, 200+ MHz

1995-7 - AMD, K5 (K5, 5K86)
RISC Processor
Processor Speed 75, 90, 100, 116
K6 - socket 7

SIXTH GENERATION

RISC Chip, Level 1 cache wider, cache off motherboard

Intel decided to go to the Slot 1 interface for the Pentium II, while AMD and Cyrix were sticking with Socket 7 on Pentium-class boards.

1994 - Netscape 1.0 was written as an alternative browser to NCSA Mosaic.

1995 - Windows '95 was launched by Bill Gates & Microsoft.

1995-7 - Intel Pentium Pro (P6)
64 GIG Memory
387 Pin Dual SPGA, "Socket 8"
Processor Speed 150, 166, 180, 200
L2 256 and 512 KB 5.5 million transistors
Dynamic Execution:

Multiple Branch Prediction: looks ahead and predicts instructions to be processed.

Dataflow Analysis: decide which commands to schedule

SPeculative Execution: schedule performed

387 pins, operates at 2.9 VDC, larger than pentium chip
Higher speed L2 cache
32-bit server and workstation-level applications, enabling fast computer-aided design, mechanical engineering and scientific computation. Each Pentium® Pro processor was packaged together with a second speed-enhancing cache memory chip, L2 256 and 512 KB

Netscape Navigator 2.0 released.

1997 - AGP is introduced. The need for increased bandwidth between the main processor and the video subsystem originally lead to the development of AGP. AGP is considered a port, and not a bus, because it only involves two devices (the processor and video card) and is not expandable. One of the great advantages of AGP is that it isolates the video subsystem from the rest of the PC so there isn't nearly as much contention over I/O bandwidth as there is with PCI. It is 32 bit and has a high-bandwidth 66 MHz speed. AGP has defined a 2X mode, which uses special signaling to allow twice as much data to be sent over the port at the same clock speed.

1997 - Intel Pentium II (Klamath)
SEC (Single-edge cartridge) "Socket 1"
Processor Speed 233, 266, 300 MHz

7.5 million transistors
Has Dynamic Execution
CPU - SEC (Single Edge Contact)
With this chip, PC users can capture, edit and share digital photos with friends and family via the Internet; edit and add text, music or between-scene transitions to home movies; and, with a video phone, send video over standard phone lines and the Internet.

1998 - Intel Pentium II (Deschutes)
333 MHz

NOTE: Pentium Pro and Pentium II have secondary cache integrated into the CPU package.
1995 - Intel 450GX/KX (Orion):Server Version
2 separate PCI buses
KX workstation version
High End Pentium Pro
60, 66 MHz bus
Dual, Quad processors
RAM 1 & 8 GB
SIMM, USB
1996 - Intel 440FX (Natoma):No suport for Ultra DMA or SDRAM
High End Pentium ProPentium II
60, 66 MHz bus
Dual processors
1 GB RAM
SIMM, DIMM
PCA, USB
1997 - Intel 440LX: Supports AGP, SDRAM, Ultra DMA, USB, SEC, SIMM, DIMM
Dual Processors
1 GB EDO SIMM, 512 MB SDRAM,
60, 66 MHz bus Comparison of 6th Generation Chips

1997/8 - AMD K6
2.2 Volts
Processor Speed 166, 200, 233, 266 MHz X 66 MHz bus, 300 MHz X 100 MHz bus MHz, 333 Mhz X 95 MHz bus, 350 MHz X 100 MHz bus, 380 MHz X 95 MHz bus, 400 MHz X 100 MHz bus

1997 - CYRIX 6X86MX PR-166, PR-200, PR-233
Processor Speed 150, 166, 187 MHz
MMX
Socket 7

1998 - Release of Windows '98.

1999 - Linux Kernel 2.2.0 Released. The number of people running Linux is estimated at over 10million, making it an not only important operating system in the Unix world, but an increasingly important one in the PC world.

Pentium III

Pentium III: The Next Generation in Processing

Detailed specs of all the above

NOTE: Most of the above information was taken from

Intel

PC Guide

Dec	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	...	24	25	26	27
Hex	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F	10	11	12	13	14	...	18	19	1A	1B

Dec	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	...	24	25	26	27
Hex	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F	10	11	12	13	14	...	18	19	1A	1B

Introduction To Information Technology

SIze Of Computer

Size of computer

Common uses

Supercomputer challenges, technologies

Processing techniques

Operating systems

Programming

Software tools

Modern supercomputer Architecture

Special-purpose supercomputers

The fastest supercomputers

The Top500 list

Current fastest supercomputer system

Quasi-supercomputing

Research and development

Contents

[edit] History

Hexadecimal numbers

EBCDIC CODE

EBCDIC Table

ASCII CODES

Octal Number System

Conversion from Octal to Decimal

Example #1

Conversion from Decimal Whole Numbers to Octal

Converting Decimal Fractions to Octal

Converting Octal to Binary

Converting Binary to Octal

Binary Number System

Binary Number System

2 Different Values

Definition of Binary

Bits

How to Show that a Number is Binary

Examples

Example 1: What is 11112 in Decimal?

Example 2: What is 10012 in Decimal?

Example 3: What is 1.12 in Decimal?

Example 4: What is 10.112 in Decimal?

Information Technology

History Of Computer

information

data

GeneraTion Of Computer

Example 1: What is 1111₂ in Decimal?

Example 2: What is 1001₂ in Decimal?

Example 3: What is 1.1₂ in Decimal?

Example 4: What is 10.11₂ in Decimal?

Dec	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	...	24	25	26	27
Hex	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F	10	11	12	13	14	...	18	19	1A	1B