CPEN 4700 Exam 1 Study Guide Questions And Answers
First Design for programmable computer. Who designed it and who programmed it?
Charles Babbage - Analytical Engine
Ada Lovelace developed "cards" (instructions) for the Analytical Engine, and thus is
considered the world's first computer programmer
Analog vs Digital Computer
Analog: did not use discrete-valued representation at all
Digital: use binary digits to perform operations
First Gen Advances
The architecture of the von Neumann computer was a basic creation in the history of
computing machines because it made general-purpose computers practical. One set of
hardware could run many different software programs at different times according to
users' needs.
Vacuum Tubes are bad because they generated more heat and failed more often
Second Gen Advances
Transistors were smaller than vacuum tubes, generated less heat, and- what was most
important- could last for hundreds of thousands or millions of hours of use
Core memory did for storage what transistors did for computational logic: it allowed
more storage in a smaller space for less cost than previous memory technologies
,Assembly language (a symbolic form of machine language) was developed in the early
1950s. The firsthigh-level languages were developed shortly after that.• FORmula
TRANslation (FORTRAN)• ALGOrithmic Language (ALGOL)• COmmon
Business-Oriented Language (COBOL)
Third Gen Advances
The discrete (individually wired) transistors used in second generation computers
began to be replaced by integrated circuits - wafers ("chips") of semiconductor material
containing multiple transistors already connected together to perform a given
function(s)
Minicomputers e.g. Data General Nova, Digital EquipmentCorporation [DEC] PDP-8 and
PDP-11). much cheaper than mainframes, so smaller companies could afford to
purchase and use computers. "Mini" is relative.
Supercomputers-developed higher performance and cost than generic mainframe
computers and continued to push high performance frontier
Fourth Gen Advances
Transistor size shrunk to the point where it became possible to put all the logic for a
complete Central Processing Unit(CPU) on one silicon "chip." We call a complete
processor on one piece of semiconductor material a microprocessor, and this was the
major new development of the fourth generation of computing.
IBM Personal Computer (PC) (1981) - based on an Intel 8088; PC/AT (1984) - based on
anIntel 80286. Microsoft developed the PC-DOS operating system for these computers
and MS-DOSfor compatibles
The adoption of microcomputers by small businesses led to the creation of office
applications, including word processors (Electric Pencil, WordStar), databases(dBase),
and spreadsheets(VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3))
Fifth Ge Advances
, The microprocessors became much more powerful-not only did the clock frequencies
increase dramatically, to hundreds of MHz and eventually beyond 1 GHz, but also much
more internal pipelining and parallelism was used in order to get more work done per
clock cycle.
More powerful CPUs, graphics cards, etc. made high-performance workstations a fact.
Networking may be the most important aspect that distinguished the fifth generation
computing systems from their predecessors. LANs, WANs, and the Internet became
very widely used. Web browsers and e-mail clients became popular software
applications
Sixth Gen Advances
the arrival of multicore CPUchips. It became possible to manufacture several full CPUs
onto one piece ofsilicon. It provides the capability to implement a multiprocessor system
(Section 6.1)that is able to execute more than one applications at the same time,
i.e.,concurrently (instead of by time-slicing), without having to employ multiple chips.
This increased demand for large memory systems made clear the weakness of 32-bit
systems, whose memory address space was naturally limited to 232 bytes = 4 GB.•
To meet this demand, manufacturers began to make 64-bit CPU chips and 64-bit
operating systems saw first use. These allow up to 264 bytes (16 Exabytes) of memory to
be addressed.
System on a chip SoC computers have taken this to the extreme and moved most or all
parts of the design, the CPU, memory and input/ output systems, onto a single hardware
chip. This contrasts to the older design of having separate chips for these major
components of a system
Three major subsystems of a computer see slide 50 of 1.13 PPT
The processing unit including
a) control logic in the control unit
b) arithmetic and/or logical operation hardware inthe arithmetic logic unit (ALU).
First Design for programmable computer. Who designed it and who programmed it?
Charles Babbage - Analytical Engine
Ada Lovelace developed "cards" (instructions) for the Analytical Engine, and thus is
considered the world's first computer programmer
Analog vs Digital Computer
Analog: did not use discrete-valued representation at all
Digital: use binary digits to perform operations
First Gen Advances
The architecture of the von Neumann computer was a basic creation in the history of
computing machines because it made general-purpose computers practical. One set of
hardware could run many different software programs at different times according to
users' needs.
Vacuum Tubes are bad because they generated more heat and failed more often
Second Gen Advances
Transistors were smaller than vacuum tubes, generated less heat, and- what was most
important- could last for hundreds of thousands or millions of hours of use
Core memory did for storage what transistors did for computational logic: it allowed
more storage in a smaller space for less cost than previous memory technologies
,Assembly language (a symbolic form of machine language) was developed in the early
1950s. The firsthigh-level languages were developed shortly after that.• FORmula
TRANslation (FORTRAN)• ALGOrithmic Language (ALGOL)• COmmon
Business-Oriented Language (COBOL)
Third Gen Advances
The discrete (individually wired) transistors used in second generation computers
began to be replaced by integrated circuits - wafers ("chips") of semiconductor material
containing multiple transistors already connected together to perform a given
function(s)
Minicomputers e.g. Data General Nova, Digital EquipmentCorporation [DEC] PDP-8 and
PDP-11). much cheaper than mainframes, so smaller companies could afford to
purchase and use computers. "Mini" is relative.
Supercomputers-developed higher performance and cost than generic mainframe
computers and continued to push high performance frontier
Fourth Gen Advances
Transistor size shrunk to the point where it became possible to put all the logic for a
complete Central Processing Unit(CPU) on one silicon "chip." We call a complete
processor on one piece of semiconductor material a microprocessor, and this was the
major new development of the fourth generation of computing.
IBM Personal Computer (PC) (1981) - based on an Intel 8088; PC/AT (1984) - based on
anIntel 80286. Microsoft developed the PC-DOS operating system for these computers
and MS-DOSfor compatibles
The adoption of microcomputers by small businesses led to the creation of office
applications, including word processors (Electric Pencil, WordStar), databases(dBase),
and spreadsheets(VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3))
Fifth Ge Advances
, The microprocessors became much more powerful-not only did the clock frequencies
increase dramatically, to hundreds of MHz and eventually beyond 1 GHz, but also much
more internal pipelining and parallelism was used in order to get more work done per
clock cycle.
More powerful CPUs, graphics cards, etc. made high-performance workstations a fact.
Networking may be the most important aspect that distinguished the fifth generation
computing systems from their predecessors. LANs, WANs, and the Internet became
very widely used. Web browsers and e-mail clients became popular software
applications
Sixth Gen Advances
the arrival of multicore CPUchips. It became possible to manufacture several full CPUs
onto one piece ofsilicon. It provides the capability to implement a multiprocessor system
(Section 6.1)that is able to execute more than one applications at the same time,
i.e.,concurrently (instead of by time-slicing), without having to employ multiple chips.
This increased demand for large memory systems made clear the weakness of 32-bit
systems, whose memory address space was naturally limited to 232 bytes = 4 GB.•
To meet this demand, manufacturers began to make 64-bit CPU chips and 64-bit
operating systems saw first use. These allow up to 264 bytes (16 Exabytes) of memory to
be addressed.
System on a chip SoC computers have taken this to the extreme and moved most or all
parts of the design, the CPU, memory and input/ output systems, onto a single hardware
chip. This contrasts to the older design of having separate chips for these major
components of a system
Three major subsystems of a computer see slide 50 of 1.13 PPT
The processing unit including
a) control logic in the control unit
b) arithmetic and/or logical operation hardware inthe arithmetic logic unit (ALU).
