CPU

A Complex Instruction Set Core (CISC) is a microprocessor instruction set architecture (ISA) in which each instruction can execute several low-level operations, such as a load from memory, an arithmetic operation, and a memory store, all in a single instruction. The term was coined in contrast to Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC). Before the first RISC processors were designed, many computer architects tried to bridge the "semantic gap" - to design instruction sets to support high-level programming languages by providing ...

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The Number of the Beast is mentioned in the Book of Revelation of the Christian New Testament and has long been accepted to be 666. In some interpretations of Christian eschatology the "Beast" is believed to refer to an Antichrist. The number 666 has many mathematical properties, some more interesting than others. Number of the Beast - References from the book of Revelation. Mark of the Beast Revelation 13:17 states: "... no one may buy or sell exc ...

Including:

• Number of the Beast - References from the book of Revelation
• Number of the Beast - Mentions outside the book of Revelation
• Number of the Beast - Alternative numbers
• Number of the Beast - Theological interpretations
• Number of the Beast - Jewish view
• Number of the Beast - Culture and psychology
• Number of the Beast - In popular culture
• Number of the Beast - Speculation and trivia

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Conway became interested in a problem in group theory proposed by mathematician John Leech having to do with the symmetry group of a particular dense packing of spheres in 24 dimensions. Conway found some remarkable properties and published the results in 1968. Conway was also interested in a problem presented in the 1940s by renowned mathematician John von Neumann. Von Neumann tried to find a hypothetical machine that could build copies of itself and succeeded when he found a mathematical model for such a machine with very complicated rules ...

See also:

Conway's Game of Life, Conway's Game of Life - Origins, Conway's Game of Life - Rules of Life, Conway's Game of Life - Description, Conway's Game of Life - The game, Conway's Game of Life - Iteration, Conway's Game of Life - Examples of patterns, Conway's Game of Life - Algorithms, Conway's Game of Life - Variations on Life, Conway's Game of Life - Patterns, Conway's Game of Life - 125/36, Conway's Game of Life - 245/3 245/36, Conway's Game of Life - Bibliography, Conway's Game of Life - External Article Links, Conway's Game of Life - Patterns and Pattern Collections, Conway's Game of Life - Life Program Links, Conway's Game of Life - External Cellular Automata Links

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Computer and video game genres - Fighting. Fighting or beat 'em up games emphasize one-on-one combat between two players, one of whom may be computer controlled. These games usually focus on martial arts, which are usually dramatic and physically impossible, and other forms of unarmed combat. Some of these games may also employ handheld weapons such as swords, or ranged attacks such as chi-based energy blasts. This genre arose in the mid-1980s and became a phenomenon with the release ...

See also:

Computer and video game genres, Computer and video game genres - Major genres, Computer and video game genres - Fighting, Computer and video game genres - First-person shooter, Computer and video game genres - MMOGs MMORPGs and MMOFPSs, Computer and video game genres - Racing, Computer and video game genres - Role-playing, Computer and video game genres - Simulators, Computer and video game genres - Sports, Computer and video game genres - Strategy, Computer and video game genres - Third-person shooters, Computer and video game genres - City-building games, Computer and video game genres - Notable genres, Computer and video game genres - Adult, Computer and video game genres - Adventure, Computer and video game genres - Arcade, Computer and video game genres - Educational, Computer and video game genres - Maze, Computer and video game genres - Music, Computer and video game genres - Party, Computer and video game genres - Pinball, Computer and video game genres - Platform, Computer and video game genres - Puzzle, Computer and video game genres - Stealth, Computer and video game genres - Survival horror, Computer and video game genres - Traditional, Computer and video game genres - Vehicular combat, Computer and video game genres - Superseded genres, Computer and video game genres - Interactive movies, Computer and video game genres - Light-gun games, Computer and video game genres - Retro, Computer and video game genres - Scrolling shooters

Read more here: » Computer and video game genres: Encyclopedia II - Computer and video game genres - Major genres

Packet sniffing is the monitoring of data traffic into and out of a computer or network. In some networks, data transmissions are sent only to the machine they are intended for, while in others, transmissions are broadcast to all machines connected, but processed only by the target computer. In the latter cases, it is possible to packet-sniff a computer using only another computer on the same network, wi ...

See also:

Computer surveillance, Computer surveillance - Surveillance techniques, Computer surveillance - Installing the surveillance software, Computer surveillance - Protection against surveillance

Read more here: » Computer surveillance: Encyclopedia II - Computer surveillance - Surveillance techniques

Bender Bending Rodríguez (known simply as Bender) is a fictional sapient robot in the Futurama animated cartoon television series. He is voiced by actor John DiMaggio. A comic anti-hero, Turanga Leela described Bender as an "alcoholic, whore-mongering, chain smoking gambler", which largely sums up his personality. He curses, fights, argues, smokes cigars (to make himself look cool), drinks constantly (though, in his defense, alcohol is his primary fuel), reads robot pornography (in the form of circuit diagrams), ...

Including:

• Bender Bending Rodriguez - Hardware
• Bender Bending Rodriguez - Trivia
• Bender Bending Rodriguez - Catchphrase and Favorite Words

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Computer files can be divided into two broad categories: binary and text. Text files are files which contain ordinary textual characters with essentially no formatting; binary files are all other files. Or, rather, text files are a special case of binary files, since any file is fundamentally a sequence of bits, and many computer components (for example, all hard disk circuitry and most system software) make no distinction between file types. However, a large percentage of application programs can understand and use text files ...

Including:

• Binary and text files - Text files
• Binary and text files - Binary files
• Binary and text files - Related Links

Read more here: » Binary and text files: Encyclopedia - Binary and text files

In computing, a benchmark is the result of running a computer program, or a set of programs, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, by running a number of standard tests and trials against it. The term, benchmark, is also commonly used for specially-designed benchmarking programs themselves. Benchmarking is usually associated with assessing performance characteristics of computer hardware, for example, the floating point operation performance of a ...

Including:

• Benchmark computing - Purpose
• Benchmark computing - Challenges
• Benchmark computing - Types of benchmarks
• Benchmark computing - Common benchmarks
• Benchmark computing - Open source benchmarks
• Benchmark computing - windows benchmarks

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The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially popular from 1985 to the early 1990s. It was released by Atari in 1985. The "ST" allegedly stood for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals. Atari ST - Overview. The Atari ST was a notable home computer, based on the Motorola 68000 CPU, with 512 KB of RAM or more, and 3½" floppy disks as storage. It was similar to other contemporary machines which used the Motorola 68000, the A ...

Including:

• Atari ST - Overview
• Atari ST - Origins
• Atari ST - Description
• Atari ST - The enhanced STs
• Atari ST - Future of the platform
• Atari ST - Software
• Atari ST - Screenshots
• Atari ST - Technical specifications
• Atari ST - ST/ST^F/ST^M/ST^FM
• Atari ST - ST^E
• Atari ST - Models
• Atari ST - Other models

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In computer programming, a bitwise operation operates on one or two bit patterns or binary numerals at the level of their individual bits. On many computers, bitwise operations are slightly faster than addition and subtraction operations and significantly faster than multiplication and division operations. Bitwise operation - Bitwise operators. Bitwise operation - NOT. A bitwise NOT or complement is a unary operation which performs logical negation on each bit. 0 d ...

Including:

• Bitwise operation - Bitwise operators
• Bitwise operation - NOT
• Bitwise operation - OR
• Bitwise operation - XOR
• Bitwise operation - AND
• Bitwise operation - Bit shift
• Bitwise operation - Applications

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The BBC Micro, affectionately known as the Beeb, was an early home computer. It was designed and built by Acorn Computers Ltd for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In the early 1980s, the BBC started what became known as the BBC Computer Literacy Project. The project was initiated largely in response to an extremely influential BBC documentary The Mighty Micro, in which Dr. Christopher Evans from the National Physical Laboratory predicted the coming (micro)computer revolution and its impact on the ...

Including:

• BBC Micro - Background
• BBC Micro - Market impact
• BBC Micro - Description
• BBC Micro - Hardware features Models A and B
• BBC Micro - Software and expandability
• BBC Micro - Successor machines and the retro scene
• BBC Micro - Specifications
• BBC Micro - Trivia

Read more here: » BBC Micro: Encyclopedia - BBC Micro

Bootstrapping alludes to a German legend about a Baron Münchhausen, who was able to lift himself out of a swamp by pulling himself up by his own hair. In later versions he was using his own boot straps to pull himself out of the sea which gave rise to the term bootstrapping. In computers, this term refers to any process where a simple system activates a more complicated system. It is the problem of starting a certain system without the system already functioning. It seems just as impossible as "pulling oneself up by the bootst ...

Including:

• Bootstrapping - Computing
• Bootstrapping - Compilers
• Bootstrapping - Linguistics
• Bootstrapping - Physics
• Bootstrapping - Biology
• Bootstrapping - Electronics
• Bootstrapping - Statistics
• Bootstrapping - Finance
• Bootstrapping - Venture Capital and Start-up Companies
• Bootstrapping - External link

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Capacitor plague (also known as Bad Capacitors, BadCaps or Bloated Capacitors) is an informal term used to reference the common premature failure of certain brands of electrolytic capacitors used on some motherboards, video cards, and power supplies. An incorrect electrolyte formula within a faulty capacitor causes the production of hydrogen gas, leading to bulging or deformation of the capacitor's case, and eventual venting of the electrolyte. In rare cases faulty capacitors have been reported to fail cata ...

Including:

• Capacitor plague - Incidence
• Capacitor plague - Identifying capacitor plague
• Capacitor plague - Cause of the failing capacitors
• Capacitor plague - Replacement of failing capacitors
• Capacitor plague - Brands and specs
• Capacitor plague - Bad
• Capacitor plague - Good
• Capacitor plague - Specifications of capacitors used on motherboards
• Capacitor plague - What happens after capacitors fail

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In computing, the term bucket can have several meanings. It is used both as a live metaphor, and as a generally accepted technical term in some specialised areas. A bucket is most commonly a type of data buffer or a type of document. Bucket computing - Features of a bucket. Various usages relate to different features. There is no usage that is consistent with every one of these features. The contents of a bucket are unsorted. A bucket has a fixed size, which is det ...

Including:

• Bucket computing - Features of a bucket
• Bucket computing - Types of bucket
• Bucket computing - Bit bucket
• Bucket computing - Documentation bucket
• Bucket computing - Bucket buffer

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The Atari 2600, released in 1977, is the first successful video game console to use plug-in cartridges instead of having one or more games built in. It was originally known as the Atari VCS, for Video Computer System, and the name "Atari 2600" (taken from the unit's Atari part number, CX2600) was first used in 1982, after the release of the more advanced Atari 5200. It was wildly successful, and during the 1980s, "Atari" was a synonym for this model in mainstream media. The 2600 was typically bundled with two joystick controllers, a conjoined ...

Including:

• Atari 2600 - History
• Atari 2600 - Development and market considerations
• Atari 2600 - Launch and runaway success
• Atari 2600 - Growing pains and decline
• Atari 2600 - The console that refused to die
• Atari 2600 - Description
• Atari 2600 - Notable games
• Atari 2600 - Technical specifications
• Atari 2600 - Console hardware
• Atari 2600 - Third-party peripherals
• Atari 2600 - Notes

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In computing, booting is a bootstrapping process that starts operating systems when the user turns on a computer system. A boot sequence is the set of operations the computer performs when it is switched on which load an operating system. Booting - Boot loader. Most computer systems can only execute code found in the memory (ROM or RAM); modern operating systems are mostly stored on hard disks, LiveCDs and USB flash drives. Just after a computer has been turned on, it doesn't have an operating system ...

Including:

• Booting - Boot loader
• Booting - Second-stage boot loader
• Booting - BIOS boot devices
• Booting - Boot sequence on standard PC IBM-PC compatible
• Booting - Other kinds of boot sequence
• Booting - Random reboot

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ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is one of the five particle detector experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, and LHCb) being constructed at the Large Hadron Collider, a new particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. It will be 45 metres long and 25 metres in diameter, and will weigh about 7,000 tonnes. The project involves roughly 2,000 scientists and engineers at 151 institutions in 34 countries. The construction is scheduled to be completed in 2007. The experiment is expecte ...

Including:

• ATLAS experiment - Background
• ATLAS experiment - Physics program
• ATLAS experiment - Components
• ATLAS experiment - Inner Detector
• ATLAS experiment - Calorimeters
• ATLAS experiment - Muon spectrometer
• ATLAS experiment - Magnet system
• ATLAS experiment - Data systems and analysis

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The ARM architecture (originally the Acorn RISC Machine) is a 32-bit RISC processor architecture that is widely used in a number of applications. ARM variants are in widespread use in embedded and low-power applications due to their power saving design features. ARM architecture - History. The ARM design was started in 1983 as a development project at Acorn Computers Ltd. The team, led by Roger Wilson and Steve Furber, started development of what in some ways represents an advanced MOS Technol ...

Including:

• ARM architecture - History
• ARM architecture - The cores
• ARM architecture - Design notes
• ARM architecture - Thumb
• ARM architecture - Jazelle
• ARM architecture - Thumb-2
• ARM architecture - Thumb-2EE
• ARM architecture - NEON
• ARM architecture - VFP

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PC cards are cards designed to be inserted into laptop computers in order to enable extra functions. They were first called PCMCIA cards as the original standards were set by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association. This awkward initialism was jokingly expanded as "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms". A later revision of the PC card is known as CardBus. The PCMCIA is also developing a new notebook peripheral specificatio ...

Including:

• PC card - PC card
• PC card - CardBus
• PC card - ExpressCard Newcard

Read more here: » PC card: Encyclopedia - PC card

x86 or 80x86 is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed and manufactured by Intel. The x86 architecture currently dominates the desktop computer, portable computer, and small server markets. The architecture is called x86 because the earliest processors in this family were identified by model numbers ending in the sequence "86": the 8086, the 80186, the 80286, the 386, and the 486. Because one cannot trademark numbers, Intel and most ...

Including:

• X86 - History
• X86 - Design
• X86 - Real mode
• X86 - 16-bit protected mode
• X86 - 32-bit protected mode
• X86 - MMX and beyond
• X86 - 3DNow!
• X86 - SSE
• X86 - SSE2
• X86 - SSE3
• X86 - 64-bit
• X86 - Virtualization
• X86 - Manufacturers

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