RISC

The majority of computer systems in use today are embedded in other machinery, such as telephones, clocks, appliances, vehicles, and infrastructure. An embedded system usually has minimal requirements for memory and program length and may require simple but unusual input/output systems. For example, most embedded systems lack keyboards, screens, disks, printers, or other recognizable I/O devices of a personal computer. They may control electric motors, relays or voltages, and reed switches, variable resistors or other electronic devices. Often, the only I/O device readable by a human is a single light-emitting diode, and severe cost ...

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 - Embedded design

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 - 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 majority of computer systems in use today are embedded in other machinery, such as telephones, clocks, appliances, vehicles, and infrastructure. An embedded system usually has minimal requirements for memory and program length and may require simple but unusual input/output systems. For example, most embedded systems lack keyboards, screens, disks, printers, or other recognizable I/O devices of a personal computer. They may control electric motors, relays or voltages, and reed switches, variable resistors or other electronic devices. Often, the only I/O device readable by a human is a single light-emitting diode, and severe cost ...

See also:

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 - Speculative execution, CPU design - Cache, CPU design - Out-of-order execution, CPU design - Superscalar designs, CPU design - Simultaneous multithreading

Read more here: » CPU design: Encyclopedia II - CPU design - Embedded design

In computer architecture, 64-bit is an adjective used to describe integers, memory addresses or other data units that are at most 64 bits (8 octets) wide, or to describe CPU and ALU architectures based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. As of 2004, 64-bit CPUs are common in servers, and have recently been introduced to the (previously 32-bit) mainstream personal computer arena in the form of the AMD64, EM64T, and P ...

Including:

• 64-bit - Architectural implications
• 64-bit - Memory limitations
• 64-bit - Timeline
• 64-bit - 32 vs 64 bit
• 64-bit - Pros and cons
• 64-bit - 64-bit data models
• 64-bit - Current 64-bit processor architectures
• 64-bit - Beyond 64 bits

Read more here: » 64-bit: Encyclopedia - 64-bit

Prior to the advent of machines that resemble today's CPUs, computers such as ENIAC had to be physically rewired in order to perform different tasks. These machines are often referred to as "fixed-program computers," since they had to be physically reconfigured in order to run a different program. Since the term "CPU" is generally defined as a software (computer program) execution device, the earliest devices that could rightly be called CPUs came with the advent of the stored-program computer. The idea of a stored-program computer wa ...

See also:

Central processing unit, Central processing unit - History, Central processing unit - Discrete transistor and IC CPUs, Central processing unit - Microprocessors, Central processing unit - CPU operation, Central processing unit - Design and implementation, Central processing unit - Integer precision, Central processing unit - Clock rate, Central processing unit - Parallelism, Central processing unit - Vector processors and SIMD, Central processing unit - Notes

Read more here: » Central processing unit: Encyclopedia II - Central processing unit - History

The AIM alliance was an alliance formed in 1991 between Apple Computer, IBM and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a next-generation operating system. It was thought that the CISC processors from Intel were an evolutionary dead-end in microprocessor design, and that since RISC was the future, the ...

Read more here: » AIM alliance: Encyclopedia - AIM alliance

The word spark has several meanings: In electricity, "spark" usually refers to a momentary electrostatic discharge across a spark gap. It can also refer to a continuous electric arc or a corona discharge. A spark may be a small airborne ember or particle of glowing, hot metal from a fire, grinding machine, the heat from an electric spark as above, or the like. SPARK programming language Small Portable Adjustable Real-time Kernel, by Real Time Microsystems ...

Including:

• Spark - Common misspellings

Read more here: » Spark: Encyclopedia - Spark

In general, all processors, micro or otherwise, run the same sort of task over and over: read an instruction and decode it find any associated data that is needed to process the instruction process the instruction write the results out Complicating this simple-looking series of events is the fact that main memory has always been slower than the processor itself. Step (2) often introduces a lengthy (in CPU terms) delay while the data arrives over the computer bus. A considerable amount of ...

See also:

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 - Speculative execution, CPU design - Cache, CPU design - Out-of-order execution, CPU design - Superscalar designs, CPU design - Simultaneous multithreading

Read more here: » CPU design: Encyclopedia II - CPU design - Design concepts

In general, all processors, micro or otherwise, run the same sort of task over and over: read an instruction and decode it find any associated data that is needed to process the instruction process the instruction write the results out Complicating this simple-looking series of events is the fact that main memory has always been slower than the processor itself. Step (2) often introduces a lengthy (in CPU terms) delay while the data arrives over the computer bus. A considerable amount of ...

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 - Design concepts

A program is a sequence of instructions that are executed by a CPU. While simple processors execute instructions one after the other, superscalar processors are capable of executing several instructions at once. Program flow may be influenced by special jump instructions that transfer execution to an instruction other than the following one. Conditional jumps are taken (execution continues at another address) or not (execution continues at the next ...

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 - Programs

The fundamental operation of most CPUs, regardless of the physical form they take, is to execute a sequence of stored instructions called a program. Discussed here are devices that conform to the common Von Neumann architecture. The program is represented by a series of numbers that are kept in some kind of computer memory. There are four steps that nearly all Von Neumann CPUs use in their operation: fetch< ...

See also:

Central processing unit, Central processing unit - History, Central processing unit - Discrete transistor and IC CPUs, Central processing unit - Microprocessors, Central processing unit - CPU operation, Central processing unit - Design and implementation, Central processing unit - Integer precision, Central processing unit - Clock rate, Central processing unit - Parallelism, Central processing unit - Vector processors and SIMD, Central processing unit - Notes

Read more here: » Central processing unit: Encyclopedia II - Central processing unit - CPU operation

The term "personal digital assistant" was coined on January 7, 1992 by John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, referring to the Apple Newton. Earlier devices like the Psion and Sharp Wizard have the functionality to be considered PDAs, however. In fact, PDAs by other names were available as early as the mid-1970s -- first as very advanced calculators, then as electronic organizers, and later as palmtops. [1]. PDAs are some times refered to as "Palms" or "Palm Pilot" after an early PDA created by Palm, Inc. This usage is a case of genericized trademark, similar to refering to ...

See also:

Personal digital assistant, Personal digital assistant - Overview, Personal digital assistant - Popular PDAs, Personal digital assistant - Other uses

Read more here: » Personal digital assistant: Encyclopedia II - Personal digital assistant - Overview

All computer architectures define the set of basic (fundamental) instructions that a computer conforming to that architecture must be capable of processing. These instructions define the basic operations that the computer can perform and the types of data that the computer can process. For example, a computer may be able to add and subtract, and it can process data that is in its registers and in its main memory. But it does not go without saying that a computer must be able to perform additions on both data that is in its registers and data that is ...

See also:

Orthogonal instruction set, Orthogonal instruction set - The definition of orthogonality, Orthogonal instruction set - Orthogonality in practice, Orthogonal instruction set - The PDP-11, Orthogonal instruction set - The MC68000, Orthogonal instruction set - The 8080 and follow on designs, Orthogonal instruction set - Into the RISC age

Read more here: » Orthogonal instruction set: Encyclopedia II - Orthogonal instruction set - The definition of orthogonality

IBM POWER - The 801 project. In 1974, IBM started a project with a design objective of creating a large telephone-switching network with a potential capacity to deal with at least 300 calls per/second. With a projected use of 20,000 instructions for each call while maintaining a real-time response, a safety margin of at least 12 MIPS was deemed necessary. Even though this requirement had been extremely ambitious at this time, the switching network would need only to perform I/O, branches, add register-register, move to register/memory, and would have little need for ...

See also:

IBM POWER, IBM POWER - History, IBM POWER - The 801 project, IBM POWER - 1982 Research Project “Cheetah”, IBM POWER - The America Project, IBM POWER - PowerPC, IBM POWER - POWER2, IBM POWER - Amazon, IBM POWER - POWER3, IBM POWER - POWER4, IBM POWER - POWER5, IBM POWER - POWER6 and POWER7, IBM POWER - The architecture, IBM POWER - Implementations, IBM POWER - Derivative CPUs

Read more here: » IBM POWER: Encyclopedia II - IBM POWER - History

The history of the PowerPC begins with IBM's 801 prototype chip of John Cocke's RISC ideas in the late '70s. 801-based cores were used in a number of IBM embedded products, eventually becoming the 16-register ROMP processor used in the IBM RT. The RT had disappointing performance and IBM started the America Project to build the fastest processor on the market. The result was the POWER architecture, introduced with ...

See also:

PowerPC, PowerPC - History, PowerPC - Design features, PowerPC - Endian-modes, PowerPC - Implementations and design wins, PowerPC - Design win summary, PowerPC - Licencees, PowerPC - General-purpose PowerPC processors, PowerPC - Embedded PowerPC microcontrollers, PowerPC - IBM now from AMCC, PowerPC - AMCC, PowerPC - Motorola now Freescale Semiconductor, PowerPC - PA Semi, PowerPC - Xilinx

Read more here: » PowerPC: Encyclopedia II - PowerPC - History

Devices called "programmers" are traditionally used to get program code into the target PIC. Most PICs that Microchip sells nowadays have ICSP (In Circuit Serial Programming) and/or LVP (Low Voltage Programming) capabilities, allowing the PIC to be programmed while it is sitting in the target circuit. ICSP programming is performed using the RB6 and RB7 pins for clock and data, while a high voltage (12V) is present on the Vpp/MCLR pin. Low voltage programming allows the elimination of the extra voltage rail in the programmer but comes at the ...

See also:

PIC microcontroller, PIC microcontroller - Coding for PICs, PIC microcontroller - Programming PICs, PIC microcontroller - Word Size, PIC microcontroller - Modern PICs, PIC microcontroller - Features, PIC microcontroller - PICs on the Internet, PIC microcontroller - PIC clones, PIC microcontroller - Wireless PICs, PIC microcontroller - dsPICs Digital Signal PICs, PIC microcontroller - 8/16-bit PIC microcontroller product families, PIC microcontroller - Commonly used PICs

Read more here: » PIC microcontroller: Encyclopedia II - PIC microcontroller - Programming PICs

IBM - Early years. IBM's history dates back decades before the development of electronic computers – before that it developed punched card data processing equipment. It originated as the Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation, which was incorporated on June 15, 1911 in Binghamton, New York. This company was a merger of the Tabulating Machine Corporation, the Computing Scale Corporation and the International Time Recording Company. The president of the Tabulating Machine Corporation at that time was He ...

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IBM, IBM - Current business activities, IBM - Culture, IBM - Diversity and workforce issues, IBM - History, IBM - Early years, IBM - World War II, IBM - Airforce and airline projects, IBM - Successes of the 1960's, IBM - Recent history, IBM - Facts and trivia, IBM - Acquisitions, IBM - Spinoffs, IBM - Projects, IBM - BlueEyes, IBM - alphaWorks, IBM - Gaming Chips, IBM - Corporate governance

Read more here: » IBM: Encyclopedia II - IBM - History

Opteron - The two key capabilities. Feature-wise, Opteron combines two important capabilities in a single processor die: native execution of legacy x86 32-bit applications without speed penalties native execution of native x86-64 64-bit applications (linear-addressing beyond 4 GB RAM) The first capability is notable because at the time of Opteron's introduction, the only other 64-bit processor architecture marketed with 32-bit x86 compatibility (Intel's Itanium) ran x86 ...

See also:

Opteron, Opteron - Technical description, Opteron - The two key capabilities, Opteron - Multi-processor features, Opteron - Multi-core Opterons, Opteron - Low-end: Socket 939, Opteron - Models, Opteron - Opteron 130 nm SOI, Opteron - Opteron 90 nm SOI

Read more here: » Opteron: Encyclopedia II - Opteron - Technical description

Flash drives are impervious to the scratches and dust that plagued previous forms of portable storage like compact discs and floppy disks, and their durable solid-state design means they often survive casual abuse (impacts, being dropped or crushed, run through a washing machine, or even dropped in coffee). This makes them ideal for transporting personal data or work files from one location to another (such as from home to school or office) or for carrying around personal data that the user typically wants to access in a variety of places. T ...

See also:

USB flash drive, 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

Read more here: » USB flash drive: Encyclopedia II - USB flash drive - Strengths and weaknesses

Convex was formed in 1982 by Bob Paluck and Steve Wallach in Richardson, Texas. It was originally named Parsec. They planned on producing a machine very similar in architecture to the Cray Research vector processor machines, with a somewhat lower performance, but with a much better price/performance ratio. In order to lower costs, the Convex designs were not as technologically aggressive as Cray's, and were based on more mainstream chip technology, attempting to make up ...

See also:

Convex Computer, Convex Computer - History, Convex Computer - Culture, Convex Computer - Famous People at Convex

Read more here: » Convex Computer: Encyclopedia II - Convex Computer - History

Supercomputers traditionally gained their speed over conventional computers through the use of innovative designs that allow them to perform many tasks in parallel, as well as complex detail engineering. They tend to be specialized for certain types of computation, usually numerical calculations, and perform poorly at more general computing tasks. Their memory hierarchy is very carefully designed to ensure the processor is kept fed with data and instructions at all times—in fact, much of the performance difference between slower computers ...

See also:

Supercomputer, Supercomputer - Software tools, Supercomputer - Uses, Supercomputer - Design, Supercomputer - Supercomputer challenges technologies, Supercomputer - Processing techniques, Supercomputer - Operating systems, Supercomputer - Programming, Supercomputer - Types of general-purpose supercomputers, Supercomputer - Special-purpose supercomputers, Supercomputer - The fastest supercomputers today, Supercomputer - Measuring supercomputer speed, Supercomputer - Current fastest supercomputer system, Supercomputer - Previous fastest supercomputer system, Supercomputer - Quasi-supercomputing, Supercomputer - Timeline of supercomputers, Supercomputer - General concepts history, Supercomputer - Other classes of computer, Supercomputer - Supercomputer companies operating, Supercomputer - Supercomputer companies defunct

Read more here: » Supercomputer: Encyclopedia II - Supercomputer - Design

OpenVMS can be divided into three layers: The kernel, made up of input/output, memory management, and process/time management subsystems. Core services, made up of DCL (DIGITAL Command Language), RMS (Record Management Services), DECwindows (OpenVMS's X11 compliant windowing system), and the run-time libraries. Utility programs for support, system management, and programming. See also:

OpenVMS, OpenVMS - History, OpenVMS - Origin and name changes, OpenVMS - Port to DEC Alpha, OpenVMS - Port to Intel Itanium, OpenVMS - Features, OpenVMS - Clustering, OpenVMS - Common Language Environment, OpenVMS - File system, OpenVMS - Timekeeping, OpenVMS - Run-time Libraries, OpenVMS - OpenVMS Hobbyist Program, OpenVMS - Central OpenVMS-related topics

Read more here: » OpenVMS: Encyclopedia II - OpenVMS - Features