Computing

The first use of SIMD instructions was in vector supercomputers such as the CDC Star-100 and the Texas Instruments ASC in the early 1970s. Vector processing was especially popularized by Cray in the 1970s and 1980s by attached vector processors such as those produced by the FPS , and by supercomputers such as the Thinking Machines CM-1 and CM-2. Sun Microsystems introduced SIMD integer instructions in its VIS instruction set extensions in 1995 in its UltraSPARC I microprocessor; the first widely deployed SIMD for gaming was Intel’s MMX extensions to the x86 architecture. IBM and Motorola then added AltiVec to the POWER architecture, and there have been several extensions to the SIMD instruction sets for both architectures.

Learn the basics of computer science with videos featuring famous technologists like Bill Gates and Satya Nadella, as well as a diverse cast of presenters from a number of industries and organizations. From authentication to encryption keys, learn how to keep your computer's hard drive protected and your personal information safe. In the Computer Peripherals Channel, find explanations, reviews, videos and prices on these parts, plus how they communicate with your computer. This course provides a comprehensive introduction and deep dive into HCI, so you can create designs that provide outstanding user experiences.

Artificial Intelligence

If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. When talking about a computer or a "PC," you're usually referring to a desktop computer found in a home or office. An example of the back of a personal computer and brief descriptions of each connection is found on our computer connections page. Memory - Temporary primary storage for data traveling between the storage and CPU.

For its January issue, hobbyist magazine Popular Electronics runs a cover story of a new computer kit – the Altair 8800. Within weeks of its appearance, customers inundated its maker, MITS, with orders. Bill Gates and Paul Allen licensed their BASIC programming language interpreter to MITS as the main language for the Altair. MITS co-founder Ed Roberts invented the Altair 8800 — which sold for $297, or $395 with a case — and coined the term “personal computer”. The machine came with 256 bytes of memory and an open 100-line bus structure that evolved into the “S-100” standard widely used in hobbyist and personal computers of this era.

Designed by John V. Blankenbaker using standard medium-- and small-scale integrated circuits, the Kenbak-1 relied on switches for input and lights for output from its 256-byte memory. In 1973, after selling only 40 machines, Kenbak Corporation closed its doors. On April 7, IBM announced five models of System/360, spanning a 50-to-1 performance range. At the same press conference, IBM also announced 40 completely new peripherals for the new family.

The ISA is a logical representative encoding of the basic set of distinct operations that a computer architecture may perform, and by which application programs specify the useful work to be done. At the machine level the hardware system directly interprets and executes a sequence or partially ordered set of these basic operations. This is true for all computer cores, from those few in the smallest mobile phones to potentially millions making up the world's largest supercomputers. High performance computer architecture extends structure to a hierarchy of functional elements, whether small and limited in capability or possibly entire processor cores themselves. In this chapter many different classes of structure are presented, each exploiting concurrency in its own particular way.

The size of a computer that a person or an organization needs depends on the computing requirements. Clearly, the National Weather Service, keeping watch on the weather fronts of many continents, has requirements different from those of a car dealer's service department that is trying to keep track of its parts inventory. And the requirements of both of them are different from the needs of a salesperson using a small laptop computer to record client orders on a sales trip.

Programming

The iPad combines many of the popular capabilities of the iPhone, such as built-in high-definition camera, access to the iTunes Store, and audio-video capabilities, but with a nine-inch screen and without the phone. Originally a Cray XT3 system, the Jaguar is a massively parallel supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a US science and energy research facility. The system cost more than $100 million to create and ran a variation of the Linux operating system with up to 10 petabytes of storage. The Jaguar was used to study climate science, seismology, and astrophysics applications.

Computer Software

Compaq's success launched a market for IBM-compatible computers that by 1996 had achieved an 83-percent share of the personal computer market. Weighing 24 pounds and costing $1,795, the Osborne 1 is the first mass-produced portable computer. Its price was especially attractive as the computer included very useful productivity software worth about $1,500 alone. It featured a 5-inch display, 64 KB of memory, a modem, and two 5.25-inch floppy disk drives. The first advertisement for a microprocessor, the Intel 4004, appears in Electronic News. Developed for Busicom, a Japanese calculator maker, the 4004 had 2250 transistors and could perform up to 90,000 operations per second in four-bit chunks.

Computers are classified according to computing power, capacity, size, mobility and other factors, as personal computers , desktop computers, laptop computers, minicomputers, handheld computers and devices, mainframes or supercomputers. For example, a mouse and a microphone are input devices used to record user activities and transform them into data that is transmitted to the system unit. A hard disk is a storage unit where data is stored and accessed by other devices.

On the other hand, you may find some institutions discourage students from learning programming beforehand to avoid students learning ‘bad’ programming habits early on. Some institutions offer joint courses, in which computer science is studied alongside subjects such as mathematics, engineering and computing. The Pentium is the fifth generation of the ‘x86’ line of microprocessors from Intel, the basis for the IBM PC and its clones. The Pentium introduced several advances that made programs run faster such as the ability to execute several instructions at the same time and support for graphics and music.

Apple had initially included a handle in their Macintosh computers to encourage users to take their Macs on the go, though not until five years after the initial introduction does Apple introduce a true portable computer. The Macintosh Portable was heavy, weighing sixteen pounds, and expensive (US$6,500). Sales were weaker than projected, despite being widely praised by the press for its active matrix display, removable trackball, and high performance. Based around the Texas Instruments TMS 9900 microprocessor running at 3 MHz, the TI 99/4 has one of the fastest CPUs available in a home computer. The TI99/4 had a wide variety of expansion boards, with an especially popular speech synthesis system that could also be used with TI's Speak & Spell educational game. Tailored for online transaction processing, the Tandem-16 is one of the first commercial fault-tolerant computers.

The Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative needed a supercomputer to help with the maintenance of the US nuclear arsenal following the ban on underground nuclear testing. The ASCI Red, based on the design of the Intel Paragon, was built by IBM and delivered to Sandia National Laboratories. Until the year 2000, it was the world's fastest supercomputer, able to achieve peak performance of 1.3 teraflops, (about 1.3 trillion calculations per second). Replacing their Archimedes computer, the RISC PC from UK's Acorn Computers uses the ARMv3 RISC microprocessor. Though it used a proprietary operating system, RISC OS, the RISC PC could run PC-compatible software using the Acorn PC Card. The RISC PC was used widely in UK broadcast television and in music production.

In this course, we use Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet application software. Everything you do on your computer will rely on both hardware and software. For example, right now you may be viewing this lesson in a web browser and using your mouse to click from page to page. As you learn about different types of computers, ask yourself about the differences in their hardware.