Home Applications
In 1977, Ken Olsen was president of the Digital Equipment Corporation, then the number two computer vendor in the world (after IBM). When asked why Digital was not going after the personal computer market in a big way, he said: ''There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.'' History showed otherwise and Digital no longer exists. Why do people buy computers for home use? Initially, for word processing and games, but in recent years that picture has changed radically. Probably the biggest reason now is for Internet access.
Some of the more popular uses of the Internet for home users are as follows:
1. Access to remote information.
2. Person-to-person communication.
3. Interactive entertainment.
4. Electronic commerce.
Access to remote information comes in many forms. It can be surfing the World Wide Web for information or just for fun. Information available includes the arts, business, cooking, government, health, history, hobbies, recreation, science, sports, travel, and many others. Fun comes in too many ways to mention, plus some ways that are better left unmentioned.
Many newspapers have gone on-line and can be personalized. For example, it is sometimes possible to tell a newspaper that you want everything about corrupt politicians, big fires, scandals involving celebrities, and epidemics, but no football, thank you. Sometimes it is even possible to have the selected articles downloaded to your hard disk while you sleep or printed on your printer just before breakfast. As this trend continues, it will cause massive unemployment among 12-year-old paperboys, but newspapers like it because distribution has always been the weakest link in the whole production chain.
The next step beyond newspapers (plus magazines and scientific journals) is the on-line digital library. Many professional organizations, such as the ACM (http://www.acm.org/) and the IEEE Computer Society (www.computer.org), already have many journals and conference proceedings on-line. Other groups are following rapidly. Depending on the cost, size, and weight of book-sized notebook computers, printed books may become obsolete. Skeptics should take note of the effect the printing press had on the medieval illuminated manuscript.
All of the above applications involve interactions between a person and a remote database full of information.
The second broad category of network use is person-to-person communication, basically the 21st century's answer to the 19th century's telephone. E-mail is already used on a daily basis by millions of people all over the world and its use is growing rapidly. It already contains audio and video as well as text and pictures.
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Friday, September 6, 2013
Thursday, September 5, 2013
READING COMPREHENSION: MICROSERVER CHIPS (PRÁCTICA)
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Intel on Wednesday introduced new 64-bit Atom C2000 processors based on the company's 22-nanometer "Silvermont" microarchitecture for microserver, storage, and networking installations in the data center.
The new System-on-a-Chip (SoC) products include one line for microservers and cold storage platforms formerly code named Avoton, and a second group of SoCs known as Rangeley which are being positioned for entry networking platforms. Intel offered a glance at Atom products at its Datacenter Day event in July.
Avoton and Rangeley, are coming out just nine months after Intel introduced its first-ever Atom SoCs for data center operations, a move that has heated the competition with other players pushing ARM-based chips for ultra low-power microservers like Calxeda.
Intel's traditional x86 rival Advanced Micro Devices has its foot in both camps at the moment, partnering with ARM to help develop the latter's own forthcoming 64-bit architecture for 2014 while continuing to sell Atom-based server and data center fabric products through its SeaMicro subsidiary.
Intel, meanwhile, is invoicing its latest SoC offerings and a software defined networking (SDN) platform matching the new Intel Ethernet Switch FM5224 chipset and the company's WindRiver Open Network Software suite as the silicon for makers of systems supporting mobile and cloud services.
Also on Wednesday, Intel showed reporters and analysts at a San Francisco event what it called "the first operational Intel Rack Scale Architecture (RSA)-based rack with Intel Silicon Photonics Technology," a new data center fabric which utilizes a new MXC connector and Corning's Intel-certified ClearCurve optical fiber.
That configuration is capable of transferring data at speeds up to 1.6 terabits-per-second across distances of up to 300 meters, the company said.
Sergis Mushell, a principal analyst for Gartner, said Intel is at this point ahead of ARM on microservers but the race is closer in other data center product categories.
"The fact is that Intel invented the [microserver] category with Atom. Now ARM has been talking about this microserver category but the only company that has made progress there [with ARM-based products] has been Calxeda," Mushell said. "And we really don't know where ARM's 64-bit architecture will be in terms of comparison with x86."
But ARM is in a better position with regards to developing storage and networking products, the analyst said.
Source: Adapted from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2423985,00.asp
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