RISC

The Macintosh, or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured and marketed by Apple Computer that run the Macintosh operating system ("Mac OS"). Named after the McIntosh apple, the original Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984. It was the first commercially successful personal computer to use a graphical user interface (“GUI”) and mouse instead of the then-standard command line interface. Following the Macintosh's introduction, Apple continued production and development of its Apple I ...

Including:

• Apple Macintosh - Current product line
• Apple Macintosh - History
• Apple Macintosh - 1979–84: Development and introduction
• Apple Macintosh - 1985–89: The desktop publishing era
• Apple Macintosh - 1990–98: Growth and decline
• Apple Macintosh - 1999 to the present: new beginnings
• Apple Macintosh - Timeline of Macintosh models
• Apple Macintosh - Hardware
• Apple Macintosh - Processor Architecture
• Apple Macintosh - Expandability and connectivity
• Apple Macintosh - Software
• Apple Macintosh - Operating system
• Apple Macintosh - Software history
• Apple Macintosh - Advertising
• Apple Macintosh - Effects on the technology industry
• Apple Macintosh - Market share and demographics
• Apple Macintosh - Advantages disadvantages and criticisms
• Apple Macintosh - Notable litigation

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The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer based on their own 32-bit ARM RISC CPU, and spawned a family of very capable machines with various options. Acorn Archimedes - Description; Early models. The first models were released in June 1987, as the 300 and 400 series. The machines differed primarily in that the 400 series included more expansion slots (four instead of two) and a ST506 controller for an internal hard drive. Both models included the Arthur OS (later ver ...

Including:

• Acorn Archimedes - Description; Early models
• Acorn Archimedes - The A3000 and A5000
• Acorn Archimedes - A new range and a laptop
• Acorn Archimedes - Significance and impact

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An assembler is a computer program for translating assembly language — essentially, a mnemonic representation of machine language — into object code. A cross assembler (see cross compiler) produces code for one type of processor, but runs on another. As well as translating assembly instruction mnemonics into opcodes, assemblers provide the ability to use symbolic names for memory locations (saving tedious calculations and manually updating addresses when a program is slightly modified), and macro facilities for performing textual substitution — typically used to encode common short sequences of instru ...

Including:

• Assembler - Assemblers

Read more here: » Assembler: Encyclopedia - Assembler

The Apple Newton, or simply Newton, was an early line of personal digital assistants developed, manufactured and marketed by Apple Computer from 1993 to 1998. The original Newtons were based on the ARM 610 RISC processor, and featured handwriting recognition. Apple's official name for the device was MessagePad; the term Newton was Apple's name for the operating system it used, but popular usage of the word Newton has grown to include the device and its software together. Apple Newton - The New ...

Including:

• Apple Newton - The Newton in development
• Apple Newton - Technical details
• Apple Newton - Outcome
• Apple Newton - eMate 300
• Apple Newton - Later efforts
• Apple Newton - Newton models
• Apple Newton - Appearances in popular culture
• Apple Newton - Other Uses
• Apple Newton - Jokes

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Assembly language commonly called assembly or asm, is a human-readable notation for the machine language that a specific computer architecture uses. Machine language, a pattern of bits encoding machine operations, is made readable by replacing the raw values with symbols called mnemonics. For example, a computer with the appropriate processor will understand this x86/IA-32 machine language: 10110000 01100001 For programmers, however, it is easier to remember the equivalent assem ...

Including:

• Assembly language - Machine instructions
• Assembly language - Assembly language directives
• Assembly language - Usage of assembly language
• Assembly language - Books

Read more here: » Assembly language: Encyclopedia - Assembly language

A computer workstation, often colloquially referred to as workstation, is a high-end general-purpose microcomputer designed to be used by one person at a time and which offers higher performance than normally found in a personal computer, especially with respect to graphics, processing power and the ability to carry out several tasks at the same time. When comparing with some of the old definitions of computing power, some people may consider a workstation to be the equivalent of a one-person minicomputer. Today the average per ...

Including:

• Computer workstation - What makes a workstation?
• Computer workstation - List of workstations and manufacturers

Read more here: » Computer workstation: Encyclopedia - Computer workstation

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (also known as California, Cal, UCB, UC Berkeley, The University of California, or simply Berkeley) is a public coeducational university situated east of the San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, California, overlooking the Golden Gate. It is ...

Including:

• University of California Berkeley - History
• University of California Berkeley - Reputation and academics
• University of California Berkeley - Campus architecture and architects
• University of California Berkeley - New construction and developments
• University of California Berkeley - Organization
• University of California Berkeley - Chancellors
• University of California Berkeley - Colleges and schools
• University of California Berkeley - Contributions to computer science
• University of California Berkeley - Sports and traditions
• University of California Berkeley - Distinguished Berkeley people
• University of California Berkeley - Student groups
• University of California Berkeley - DeCal
• University of California Berkeley - Research facilities
• University of California Berkeley - Points of interest

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The DEC Alpha, also known as the Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit RISC microprocessor originally developed and fabricated by Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), which used it in its own line of workstations and servers. Designed as a successor to the VAX line of computers, it supported the VMS operating system, as well as Digital UNIX. Later open source operating systems also ran on the Alpha, notably Linux and BSD UNIX flavours. Microsoft supported the processor until Windows NT 4.0 SP6 but did not extend Alpha support beyond release candida ...

Including:

• DEC Alpha - History
• DEC Alpha - Versions
• DEC Alpha - Model history

Read more here: » DEC Alpha: Encyclopedia - DEC Alpha

A USB flash drive is essentially NAND-type flash memory integrated with a USB 1.1 or 2.0 interface used as a small, lightweight, removable data storage device of up to 8 GB (as of 2006). Depending on the drive type and OS version, and in some cases what patches are installed, the drives generally work with Windows 98/ME/2000/XP (Windows 98 requires a driver to be installed; often, inconveniently, a specific driver for each type of flash drive), Macintosh, ...

Including:

• USB flash drive - History
• USB flash drive - Components
• USB flash drive - Essential components
• USB flash drive - Additional components
• USB flash drive - Strengths and weaknesses
• USB flash drive - Size and style of packaging
• USB flash drive - Common uses
• USB flash drive - Network administration
• USB flash drive - Flash drive for applications
• USB flash drive - Flash drives as audio players
• USB flash drive - Flash drives to boot operating systems
• USB flash drive - Security
• USB flash drive - Naming confusion
• USB flash drive - Comparison to other portable memory forms
• USB flash drive - Future developments
• USB flash drive - Trivia

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Data General was one of the first minicomputer firms from the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation. Their first product, the Nova, was a 16-bit minicomputer which was an advance in technology in the era of 8-bit machines. The Nova, followed by the Supernova, and the Eclipse product lines, were used in many applications for the next two decades. The company employed an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) sales stratey to sell to third parties who incorporated the Data General c ...

Including:

• Data General - History
• Data General - Origin founding and early years: The Nova and SuperNova
• Data General - Late 70s to late 80s: Crisis and a short term solution
• Data General - Data General-One
• Data General - Lock-in or no lock-in?
• Data General - AViiON
• Data General - The final downturn and the takeover by EMC; life after death
• Data General - Software
• Data General - Notable alumni

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The VIA C3 is an x86 central processing unit for personal computers produced by VIA Technologies. Although the predecessor to the VIA C3 was called the "VIA Cyrix III," both it and the VIA C3 are based on the CPU design technology of Centaur Technology, makers of the WinChip C6. VIA bought Centaur from IDT. As of March 2004 the fastest edition currently available works at the speed of 1.4 GHz with a 133 MHz front side bus on a Socket 370 motherboard or factory soldered EBGA on Mini-ITX mainboards. Both fanless and fan ...

Including:

• VIA C3 - Core development
• VIA C3 - Processor table
• VIA C3 - Roadmap changes
• VIA C3 - Comparative die size
• VIA C3 - Design methodology
• VIA C3 - Contracts

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Cell is a microprocessor jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. The Cell architecture is intended to be scalable through the use of vector processing. The first major commercial application of Cell is in Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3 game console. Cell microprocessor - History. In 2000, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., Toshiba Corp., and IBM formed an alliance ("STI") to design and build the processor. The STI Design Center in Austin, Texas opened in March 2001. ^Including:

• Cell microprocessor - History
• Cell microprocessor - Architecture
• Cell microprocessor - Power Processor Element
• Cell microprocessor - Synergistic Processing Elements SPE
• Cell microprocessor - Element Interconnect Bus EIB
• Cell microprocessor - Memory controller and I/O
• Cell microprocessor - Broadband Engine
• Cell microprocessor - Architecture compared
• Cell microprocessor - Possible applications
• Cell microprocessor - Blade server
• Cell microprocessor - Console videogames
• Cell microprocessor - Home cinema
• Cell microprocessor - Software engineering
• Cell microprocessor - Job queue
• Cell microprocessor - Self-multitasking of SPEs
• Cell microprocessor - Stream processing
• Cell microprocessor - Open source software development
• Cell microprocessor - Acronyms

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Originally, the word computing was synonymous with counting and calculating, and a science that deals with the original sense of computing mathematical calculations. "Computing" has come to mean the operation and usage of computing machines, the electrical processes carried out within the computing hardware itself, and the theoretical concepts governing them (computer science). The following definition of computing is gi ...

Including:

• Computing - Science and theory
• Computing - Hardware
• Computing - Instruction-level taxonomies
• Computing - Software
• Computing - History of computing
• Computing - Business computing
• Computing - Human factors
• Computing - Computer security
• Computing - Data
• Computing - Numeric data
• Computing - Character data
• Computing - Other data topics
• Computing - Mechatronics
• Computing - Classes of computers
• Computing - Companies - current
• Computing - Companies - historic
• Computing - Professional organizations
• Computing - Standards organizations and consortia
• Computing - Miscellaneous

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Clementine was a joint space project between the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO, previously the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or SDIO) and NASA. The objective of the mission was to test sensors and spacecraft components under extended exposure to the space environment and to make scientific observations of the Moon and the near-Earth asteroid 1620 Geographos. The Geographos observations were not made due to a malfunction in the spacecraft. The lunar observations made included imaging at various wavelengths i ...

Including:

• Clementine mission - Spacecraft design
• Clementine mission - Mission
• Clementine mission - Science instruments
• Clementine mission - Charged Particle Telescope CPT
• Clementine mission - Ultraviolet/Visible camera
• Clementine mission - Near-Infrared CCD Camera NIR
• Clementine mission - Laser Image Detection and Ranging LIDAR System
• Clementine mission - High-Resolution Camera HIRES

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A Very Long Instruction Word or VLIW CPU architecture implements a form of instruction level parallelism. Similar to superscalar architectures, it uses several execution units (e.g. two multipliers), which enables the CPU to execute several instructions at the same time (e.g. two multiplications). Very long instruction word - Design. In superscalar designs, the number of execution units is invisible to the instruction set. Each instruction encodes only one operation. For most superscalar designs, the ...

Including:

• Very long instruction word - Design
• Very long instruction word - History
• Very long instruction word - Implementations

Read more here: » Very long instruction word: Encyclopedia - Very long instruction word

In computer architecture, a branch predictor is the part of a processor that determines whether a conditional branch in the instruction flow of a program is likely to be taken or not. This is called branch prediction. Branch predictors are crucial in today's modern, superscalar processors for achieving high performance. They allow processors to fetch and execute instructions without waiting for a branch to be resolved. Almost all pipelined processors do branch prediction of some form, because they must guess the address ...

Including:

• Branch predictor - Trivial prediction
• Branch predictor - Static prediction
• Branch predictor - Next line prediction
• Branch predictor - Bimodal branch prediction
• Branch predictor - Local branch prediction
• Branch predictor - Global branch prediction
• Branch predictor - Combined branch prediction
• Branch predictor - Agree prediction
• Branch predictor - Overriding branch prediction
• Branch predictor - History

Read more here: » Branch predictor: Encyclopedia - Branch predictor

VAX is a 32-bit computing architecture that supports an orthogonal instruction set (machine language) and virtual addressing (i.e. demand paged virtual memory). It was developed in the mid-1970s by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). DEC was later purchased by Compaq, which in turn was purchased by Hewlett-Packard. The VAX has been perceived as the quintessential CISC processing architecture, with its very large number of addressing modes and machine instructions, including instructions for such complex operations as queue ins ...

Including:

• VAX - The name
• VAX - Operating systems
• VAX - History
• VAX - VAX models

Read more here: » VAX: Encyclopedia - VAX

This list is far from comprehensive as old architectures are abandoned and new ones invented on a continual basis. There are many commercially available microprocessors and microcontrollers implementing ISAs in all shapes and sizes. Customised ISAs are also quite common in some applications, e.g. ARC International, application-specific integrated circuit, FPGA, and reconfigurable computing. Also see history of computing hardware. Instruction set - ISAs commonly implemented in hardware. Alpha AXP (DEC ...

See also:

Instruction set, Instruction set - Instruction set design, Instruction set - code density, Instruction set - List of ISAs, Instruction set - ISAs commonly implemented in hardware, Instruction set - ISAs commonly implemented in software with hardware incarnations, Instruction set - ISAs never implemented in hardware, Instruction set - Categories of ISA, Instruction set - Examples of commercially available ISA, Instruction set - Others

Read more here: » Instruction set: Encyclopedia II - Instruction set - List of ISAs

The "words" of a machine language are called instructions, each of which cause an elementary action by the CPU, such as reading from a memory location. Instructions are patterns of bits with different patterns corresponding to different commands to the machine. Every CPU model has its own machine code, although there is considerable overlap between some. If CPU A understands the full language of CPU B it is said that A is compatible with B. CPU B may not be compatible with CPU A ...

See also:

Machine code, Machine code - Machine code instructions, Machine code - Programs, Machine code - Assembly languages, Machine code - Example

Read more here: » Machine code: Encyclopedia II - Machine code - Machine code instructions

Humans use mnemonic codes to refer to machine code instructions. Such a more readable rendition of the machine language is called an assembly language and consists of both binary numbers and simple words whereas machine code is composed only of the two binary digits 0 and 1. For example, on the Zilog Z80 processor, the machine code 00000101 causes the CPU to decrement the B processor register. In assembly la ...

See also:

Machine code, Machine code - Machine code instructions, Machine code - Programs, Machine code - Assembly languages, Machine code - Example

Read more here: » Machine code: Encyclopedia II - Machine code - Assembly languages

The first CPUs were designed to do mathematical calculations faster and more reliably than human "computers". Each successive generation of CPU might be designed to achieve some of these goals: higher performance levels of a single program or thread higher throughput levels of multiple programs/threads less power consumption for the same performance level lower cost for the same performance level smaller die-area to allow higher levels of integration within one VLSI chip (multiple CPUs ...

See also:

CPU design, CPU design - Goals of CPU design, CPU design - History of general purpose CPUs, CPU design - 1950s: early designs, CPU design - 1960s: the computer revolution and CISC, CPU design - 1970s: large scale integration, CPU design - Early 1980s: the lessons of RISC, CPU design - Mid-1980s to today: exploiting instruction level parallelism, CPU design - 1990 to today: looking forward, CPU design - Embedded design, CPU design - Other design issues, CPU design - Design concepts, CPU design - RISC, CPU design - Instruction pipelining, CPU design - Cache, CPU design - Superscalar designs, CPU design - Out-of-order execution, CPU design - Speculative execution, CPU design - Multiprocessing and Multithreading

Read more here: » CPU design: Encyclopedia II - CPU design - Goals of CPU design