RISC

The products produced by SGI, as well as the strategies and market positions pursued by the company, have varied since SGI was founded. However, the graphical computing workstation industry has remained a focus and core business of SGI throughout its history. Silicon Graphics - Founding. Jim Clark left his position as a computer science professor at Stanford University to found SGI with a cadre of Stanford graduate students including Kurt Akeley, Tom Davis, Rocky Rhodes, Marc Hannah, Herb Kuta, and Mark Grossman. The Mayfield Group supplied the initial venture funding. Silicon Gra ...

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Silicon Graphics, Silicon Graphics - History, Silicon Graphics - Founding, Silicon Graphics - First generation of products, Silicon Graphics - RISC era, Silicon Graphics - ARC effort, Silicon Graphics - Entertainment industry, Silicon Graphics - Name and logo changes, Silicon Graphics - Alias Wavefront and Cray acquisitions, Silicon Graphics - Late 1990s and recent developments, Silicon Graphics - Switch to Itanium, Silicon Graphics - The ever-shrinking SGI, Silicon Graphics - SGI user base and core market, Silicon Graphics - High-end Server market, Silicon Graphics - SGI product line, Silicon Graphics - Current SGI products, Silicon Graphics - Past SGI products

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Personal digital assistant - Touch screen. Practically all PDAs features a touch screen for user interaction, having only a few buttons usually reserved for shortcuts to oftenly used programs. The PDAs usually have a detachable stylus that can be used on the touch screen. Interaction is then done by tapping the screen to activate buttons or menu choices, and dragging the stylus to for example highlight text. Text input is usually done in one of two ways: Using a virtual keyboard, where a keybo ...

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Personal digital assistant, Personal digital assistant - Functionality, Personal digital assistant - Touch screen, Personal digital assistant - Synchronization, Personal digital assistant - Customization, Personal digital assistant - Other functionality, Personal digital assistant - Overview, Personal digital assistant - History, Personal digital assistant - OS, Personal digital assistant - Architecture, Personal digital assistant - Increasing popularity, Personal digital assistant - Popular PDAs

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The earliest Pentiums were released at the clock speeds of 66 MHz and 60 MHz. Later on 75, 90, 100, 120, 133, 150, 166, 200, and 233 MHz versions gradually became available. 266 and 300 MHz versions were later released for mobile computing. Pentium OverDrive processors were released at speeds of 63 and 83 MHz as an upgrade option for older 486-class computers. Pentium - P5 P54 P54C. The original Pentium microprocessor had the internal code name P5, and was a pipelined in-order superscalar microprocessor, p ...

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Pentium, Pentium - Major changes from the 486, Pentium - Models, Pentium - P5 P54 P54C, Pentium - P55C Tillamook, Pentium - Other uses of Pentium trademark

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Soon after NeXT, Inc. was formed, Apple brought a lawsuit against the company. In an out of court settlement between the two parties, as of January 1986, NeXT was restricted to the workstation market. By the middle of 1986 it was clear that no existing operating system (OS) was capable of hosting the toolkit, at least not on a personal computer level. Instead of making and selling a toolkit, the business plan changed to making and selling complete machines running it on top of a Unix-like Mach-based OS. The latter would be created by ...

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NeXT, NeXT - Prehistory, NeXT - NeXT Computer, NeXT - NeXT Software, NeXT - End of NeXT

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Multi-core computing - Technical pressures. While CMOS manufacturing technology continues to improve, reducing the size of single gates, physical limits of semiconductor-based microelectronics become a major design concern. Some effects of these physical limitations can cause significant heat dissipation and data synchronization problems. The demand for more complex and capable microprocessors causes CPU designers to utilize various methods of increasing performance. Some ILP methods like superscalar pipelining a ...

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Multi-core computing, Multi-core computing - Commercial examples, Multi-core computing - Development motivation, Multi-core computing - Technical pressures, Multi-core computing - Commercial incentives, Multi-core computing - Advantages, Multi-core computing - Disadvantages, Multi-core computing - Software impact, Multi-core computing - Licensing, Multi-core computing - Notes

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The x86 architecture is a CISC design with variable instruction length. Word sized memory access is allowed to unaligned memory addresses. Words are stored in the little-endian order. Backwards compatibility has always been a driving force behind the development of the x86 architecture (the design decisions this has required are often criticised, particularly by proponents of competing processors, who are frustrated by the continued success of an architecture widely perceived as quantifiably inferior). Modern x86 processors translate the x86 instruction set to more RISC-like micro-instructions (or micro-ops) upon which modern micro-architectu ...

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X86, 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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Data General - Origin founding and early years: The Nova and SuperNova. Data General (DG) formed when several engineers from Digital Equipment Corporation were frustrated with management and left to form their own company. In this case the main protagonists were Edson De Castro, Henry Burkhardt III, and Richard Sogge of Digital Equipment (DEC), and Herbert Richman of Fairchild Semiconductor. The company was incorporated ...

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Data General, 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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Alpha was born out of an earlier RISC project named PRISM, itself the final product of several earlier projects. DEC had been marketing the DECstation line of workstations based on the MIPS architecture, and unsurprisingly PRISM shared many features with MIPS. Among the differences between PRISM and MIPS, however, was that PRISM supported a user-programmable microcode known as Epicode. PRISM had been designed with the intent of releasing a new operating system along with it, known as Emerald, which would allow it to run "native ...

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DEC Alpha, DEC Alpha - History, DEC Alpha - Versions, DEC Alpha - Model history

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Sun Microsystems - Operating systems. All Sun systems have been based on Unix systems which are well known for system stability and a consistent design philosophy. The Sun 1 was shipped with Unisoft V7 Unix. Later in 1982 Sun provided a customized 4.1BSD Unix called SunOS as an operating system for its workstations. In 1992, along with AT&T, it integrated BSD Unix and System V into Solaris, which as a result is based on System V Release 4. Sun offered a secure variant of Solaris called Trusted Solaris for releases before the current Solaris 10, which includes the sam ...

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Sun Microsystems, Sun Microsystems - Brief history, Sun Microsystems - Hardware, Sun Microsystems - The Bubble and Sun's subsequent struggle for survival, Sun Microsystems - Present focus, Sun Microsystems - Software, Sun Microsystems - Operating systems, Sun Microsystems - Java platform, Sun Microsystems - Office suite, Sun Microsystems - Notable persons, Sun Microsystems - Founders

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David Neil Cutler, Sr. was born in Lansing, Michigan and grew up in DeWitt, Michigan. After graduating from Olivet College in 1965, Cutler went to work for DuPont. One of his tasks was developing and running computer simulations on Digital machines. He developed an interest in operating systems and left DuPont to pursue that interest. Cutler's software career started at a small company he founded called Agrippa-Ord, located in Monument Square, Concord, Massachusetts (or possibly in Acton, Massachusetts), mark ...

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Dave Cutler, Dave Cutler - Personal history, Dave Cutler - VMS, Dave Cutler - Prism and Mica projects, Dave Cutler - Windows NT, Dave Cutler - Quotation

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The first use of subprograms was in assembly languages that did not have a call instruction. On these computers, subroutines needed to be called by a sequence of lower level instructions, possibly implemented as a macro. These instructions typically modified the program code rather like the infamous COBOL alter statement, modifying the address of a branch at a standard location so that it behaved like an explicit return instruction. Even with this cumbersome approach subroutines proved so useful that soon most architectures provided instructions to help with subroutine calls, ...

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Subroutine, Subroutine - History, Subroutine - Technical overview, Subroutine - Low-level implementation, Subroutine - C and C++ examples, Subroutine - Advantages of subprograms, Subroutine - Local variables recursion and re-entrancy, Subroutine - Overloading, Subroutine - Conventions, Subroutine - Related terms and clarification, Subroutine - Reference

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The company was founded in 1957 by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson, two engineers who had been working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory on the TX-2 project. The TX-2 was a transistor-based computer using the then-huge amount of 64K 36-bit words of core memory. When that project ran into difficulties, Olsen left to form DEC with Harlan Anderson, a colleague from his MIT days. At the time the market was hostile to computer companies, and investors shied from their plans. Instead they started building small digital "modules" (each effectively a s ...

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Digital Equipment Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation - History, Digital Equipment Corporation - 8-bit computers, Digital Equipment Corporation - 12-bit Computers, Digital Equipment Corporation - 16-bit computers, Digital Equipment Corporation - 18-bit Computers, Digital Equipment Corporation - 36-bit computers, Digital Equipment Corporation - VAX Computer series, Digital Equipment Corporation - Alpha, Digital Equipment Corporation - Closing DEC's Business, Digital Equipment Corporation - Accomplishments

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The first VAX model sold was the VAX-11/780, which became available in 1978. The architect of this model was Bill Strecker. Many different models with different prices, performance levels, and capacities were subsequently created. VAX superminis were very popular in the early 1980s. In 2001 there were still VAX computers doing useful work, and Compaq was reportedly manufacturing and selling a tiny number of new ones. By 2005 all manufacturing of VAX computers had ceased, but old syst ...

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

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PostScript - Before PostScript. Prior to the introduction of PostScript, printers were designed to print character output given the text—typically in ASCII—as input. There were a number of technologies for this task, but most shared the property that the characters were physically difficult to change, as they were stamped onto typewriter keys, bands of metal, or optical plates. This changed to some degree with the increasing popularity of dot matrix printers. The characters on these systems were "drawn ...

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PostScript, PostScript - History, PostScript - Usage in printing, PostScript - Before PostScript, PostScript - PostScript printing, PostScript - Font handling, PostScript - Other implementations, PostScript - Usage as a display system, PostScript - The language, PostScript - Arithmetics, PostScript - Named variables, PostScript - Procedure definitions, PostScript - Graphics manipulations

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Java programs are a typical example of the latter point. Java source code is "compiled" to an intermediate-language bytecode which is then interpreted by an interpreter, the JVM, which then interfaces that program with the Java software libraries. In phones, PDAs and other wireless mobile devices, these libraries are the J2ME. Some phones, even without a full fledged OS, enable Java programs such as games to operate. Java and the bytecode are said to be platform independent. But this is because Java is the platform as well as a progra ...

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Platform computing, Platform computing - Hardware operating system and virtual machine, Platform computing - Java, Platform computing - Role in software, Platform computing - Hardware examples, Platform computing - Phone platforms

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The second line of DECstations began with the DECstation 2100 and 3100, released in 1989, which were the first commercially available RISC-based machines built by DEC. At the time DEC was mostly known for their CISC systems including the successful PDP and VAX lines. The DECstation 3100 was claimed to be the world's fastest UNIX workstation at the time. When it was introduced it was about three times as fast as the VAXstation 3100 which was introduced at about the same time. In contrast to the VAX (and the later DEC Alpha architecture), no v ...

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DECstation, DECstation - First DECstation line, DECstation - Second DECstation line, DECstation - Models

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Edson deCastro was the Product Manager at Digital Equipment (DEC) of their pioneering PDP-8, a 12-bit computer generally considered by most to be the first true minicomputer. DeCastro was convinced, however, that it was possible to improve upon the PDP-8 by building a 16-bit minicomputer on a single board. Ken Olsen was not supportive of this project, so deCastro left DEC along with another hardware engineer, Richard Sogge, and a software engineer, Henry Burkha ...

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Data General Nova, Data General Nova - History, Data General Nova - Technical description, Data General Nova - Assembly language examples, Data General Nova - Hello world program, Data General Nova - 16-bit multiplication, Data General Nova - Binary print accumulator, Data General Nova - Emulating a Data General Nova

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PlayStation - Development. Nintendo asked Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on called "PlayStation" for the SNES. Because Sony wanted 25% of all profits Nintendo earned from sales of this PlayStation and all PlayStation games, after Sony revealed that they were developing it, Nintendo instead went to Philips. This caused Sony to consider abandoning their research, however instead they used what they had developed so far and made it into a full blown console. This led to Nintendo filing a lawsuit claiming breach of con ...

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PlayStation, PlayStation - History, PlayStation - Development, PlayStation - Launch, PlayStation - Titles, PlayStation - Variants, PlayStation - Successors, PlayStation - Criticism, PlayStation - Screenshots, PlayStation - Specifications, PlayStation - Main CPU, PlayStation - Graphics Processing Unit, PlayStation - Sound Processing Unit, PlayStation - Memory, PlayStation - CD-ROM Drive

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Four independent sound channels (one noise and 3 melodic) using the Texas Instruments SN76489 sound chip Built-in hardware support included: pluggable ROMs, directly or via "Sideways" daughterboard tape interface (with motor control), using a variation of the Kansas City standard data encoding scheme Centronics parallel printer (model B only) serial communication (using RS-423, a superset of RS-232) display output for TV, RGB or 1v p-p video monitor four analo ...

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BBC Micro, 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

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The Game Boy Advance is backwards compatible with most games previously released for the Game Boy or the Game Boy Color, as well as new software developed to take advantage of the new technical capabilities of the system. It is powered by two AA batteries, which give about 15-30 hours of play time, as well as an optional power supply that plugs directly into the GBA's battery bracket. See also:

Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance - Hardware, Game Boy Advance - Processors, Game Boy Advance - Display, Game Boy Advance - Graphics, Game Boy Advance - Media, Game Boy Advance - Connectivity, Game Boy Advance - Models, Game Boy Advance - Game Boy Advance original model, Game Boy Advance - Game Boy Advance SP, Game Boy Advance - Game Boy Micro, Game Boy Advance - Accessories, Game Boy Advance - Unofficial accessories, Game Boy Advance - Games, Game Boy Advance - Screenshots

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When the time came to design the successor to the Sega Saturn, the new President of Sega, Shoichiro Irimajiri, took the unusual step of hiring an outsider. He hired Tatsuo Yamamoto from IBM Austin to head a skunkworks group to develop the next-generation console. However, it soon became apparent that the existing Japanese hardware group led by Hideki Sato did not want to relinquish control of hardware, and so there were two competing designs led by two different groups. ...

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Sega Dreamcast, Sega Dreamcast - History, Sega Dreamcast - Design, Sega Dreamcast - Launch, Sega Dreamcast - Competition, Sega Dreamcast - End of production, Sega Dreamcast - Technology, Sega Dreamcast - Online, Sega Dreamcast - Models, Sega Dreamcast - Accessories, Sega Dreamcast - Screenshots, Sega Dreamcast - Technical specifications

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In 1866 the land which is now the Berkeley campus was first purchased by the private College of California (established by Congregational minister Henry Durant in 1855). However, lacking the funds to operate, the College of California merged with state-run Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College, forming the University of California on March 23, 1868, with Durant becoming the first president. The university first opened in Oakland in 1869. In 1873, with the completion of North and South Halls, the university relocated to the Berkel ...

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University of California Berkeley, 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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