READING COMPREHENSION: PROCESSORS (PRÁCTICA)

PRACTICA: VAYA AL COMENTARIO Y DIGA SI LAS AFIRMACIONES SON VERDADERAS O FALSAS.

PROCESSORS

Intel Core is a brand name used for various mid-range to high-end consumer and business microprocessorsmade by Intel.

In general, processors sold as Core are more powerful variants of the same processors marketed as entry-level Celeron and Pentium.

The current lineup of Core processors includes the latest Intel Core i7, Intel Core i5, and Intel Core i3, and the older Intel Core 2 Solo, Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad, and Intel Core 2 Extreme lines.
 

The original Core brand refers to Intel's 32-bit mobile dual-core x86 CPUs that derived from the Pentium M branded processors. The processor family used a more enhanced version of the Intel P6 microarchitecture.

The Core brand comprised two branches: the Duo(dual-core) and Solo (Duo with one disabled core, which replaced the Pentium M brand of single-core mobile processor).

Intel Core Duo (product code 80539) consists of two cores on one die, a 2 MB L2 cache shared by both cores, and an arbiter bus that controls both L2 cache and FSB (front-side bus) access.

NEHALEM MICROARCHITECTURE BASED

With the release of the Nehalem microarchitecture in November 2008, Intel introduced a new naming scheme for its Core processors. There are three variants, Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7, but the names no longer correspond to specific technical features like the number of cores.

The Core i3 was intended to be the new low end of the performance processor line from Intel, following the retirement of the Core 2 brand.

The first Nehalem based Core i3 was Clarkdale-based, with an integrated GPU (Graphics Processing Units) and two cores. The same processor is also available as Core i5 and Pentium, with slightly different configurations. It is similar to the Core i5-4xx series but running at lower clock speeds and without Turbo Boost.

                                                                                    Source: www.enwikipedia.org (Access June, 2012)

READING COMPREHENSION: Windows 8

Windows 8: What You Need to Know

The version of Microsoft's operating system ("Windows 8" is just a codename) is a radical
departure, designed for touch screens.

Essentially, Microsoft showed how Windows 8 will work on both tablets and traditional PCs. The operating system's home screen is filled with big, touchable panels, like the live tiles in Windows Phone 7, and from there you can tap and change your way to other touch-based applications. But underneath that touchy layer is plain old Windows, with a task bar, file manager, app icons--everything.

 

From the start menu, which shows basic information like time and unread e-mail counts, users go upwards to reveal the home screen and its tiles. As with Windows Phone 7, apps can show some information within the tiles--users needn't click on the weather app to see the current temperature, for example. Going from the right bezel brings up a menu that can take users from an app back to the home screen.

Users can multitask between open apps by going across from the left bezel. And therein lies the coolest-looking feature of Windows 8: When entering in a new app, users can leave it next to the app that's currently running. This allows users to view two apps at the same time--something that no existing tablet OS can do.

                                                                                                From www.pcworld.com

PRACTICA: VAYA AL COMENTARIO Y COMPLETE LAS ORACIONES EN ESPAÑOL.

READING COMPREHENSION: OPERATING SYSTEMS (PRÁCTICA)

Realice las actividades prácticas del texto:

What's Open Source?

The term open source was first introduced by some free software hackers in 1998 to be a marketing term for "free software." They felt that some people unfamiliar with the free software movement -- namely, large corporations, who'd suddenly taken an interest in the more than ten years' worth of work that had been put into it -- might be scared by the word "free." They were concerned that decision-makers in these corporations might confuse free software with things like freeware, which is software provided free of charge, and in executable form only. (Free software means nothing of the sort, of course; the "free" in "free software" has always referred to freedom, not price.)
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was founded to promote software that conforms with their public "Open Source Definition," which was derived from the "Debian Free Software Guidelines" (DFSG), originally written by Bruce Perens as a set of software inclusion guidelines for Debian. All free software -- including software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License -- conforms with this definition.
But some free software advocates and organizations, including the GNU Project, do not endorse the term "open source" at all, believing that it obscures the importance of "freedom" in this movement.
Whether you call it free software, open source software, or something else, there is one fundamental difference between this kind of software and proprietary, non-free software -- and that is that free software always ensures that everyone is granted certain fundamental freedoms with respect to that software.

What's Linux?

In the early 1990s, Finnish computer science student Linus Torvalds began hacking on Minix, a small, Unix-like operating system for personal computers then used in college operating systems courses. He decided to improve the main software component underlying Minix, called the kernel, by writing his own. (The kernel is the central component of any Unix-like operating system.)
In late 1991, Torvalds published the first version of this kernel on the Internet, calling it "Linux" (a play on both Minix and his own name).
When Torvalds published Linux, he used the copyleft software license published by the GNU Project, the GNU General Public License. Doing so made his software free to use, copy, and modify by anyone -- provided any copies or variations were kept equally free. Torvalds also invited contributions by other programmers, and these contributions came; slowly at first but, as the Internet grew, thousands of hackers and programmers from around the globe contributed to his free software project. The Linux software was immensely extended and improved so that the Linux-based system of today is a complete, modern operating system, which can be used by programmers and non-programmers alike.

What's Debian?

It takes more than individual software programs to make something that we can use on our computers -- someone has to put it all together. It takes time to assemble the pieces into a cohesive, usable collection, and test it all, and then keep up to date with the new developments of each piece of software (a small change in any one of which may introduce a new software dependency problem or conflict with the rest). A Linux distribution is such an assemblage. You can do it yourself, of course, and "roll your own" distribution -- since it's all free software, anyone can add to it or remove from it and call the resulting concoction their own. Most people, however, choose to leave the distribution business to the experts.
For the purposes of this book, I will assume that you are using the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, which, of all the major distributions, is the only one designed and assembled in the same manner that the Linux kernel and most other free software is written -- by individuals.
And when I say "Linux" anywhere in this book (including in the title), unless noted, I am not referring to the bare kernel itself, but to the entire working free software system as a whole. Some people call this "GNU/Linux."
There are many other distributions, and some of them are quite acceptable -- many users swear by Red Hat Linux, for example, which is certainly popular, and reportedly easy to install. The SuSE distribution is very well-received in Europe. So when people speak of Debian, Red Hat, SuSE, and the like in terms of Linux, they're talking about the specific distribution of Linux and related software, as assembled and repackaged by these companies or organizations. The core of the distributions are the same -- they're all the Linux kernel, the GNU Project software, and various other free software -- but each distribution has its own packaging schemes, defaults, and configuration methods. It is by no means wrong to install and use any of these other distributions, and every recipe in this book should work with all of them (with the exception of variations that are specific to Debian systems, and are labelled as such in the text).
In Debian's early days, it was referred to as the "hacker's distro," because it could be very difficult for a newbie to install and manage.

By Pete Login

Source: http://www.dsl.org/ (Access 23/05/2008)

ACTIVIDADES
1- ANSWER THE QUESTIONS:
a) ¿Quién introdujo por 1ra vez el termino "open source"?
b) ¿Porqué?
c) ¿Porqué el Proyecto GNU no da crédito al término "open source"?
d) ¿Qué asegura el software libre?
e) ¿Qué es Minix?
f) ¿Cuál es el componente principal del sistema operativo parecido a Unix?

2- DIGA SI LAS SIGUIENTES AFIRMACIONES SON VERDADERAS O FALSAS. JUSTIFIQUE LAS FALSAS:
a) Torvalds utilizó la licencia del Proyecto GNU.
b) Los que ayudaron a Torvalds a crear Linux eran sólo piratas informáticos.
c) Linux es usado en la actualidad por cualquier persona.
d) El autor del artículo se refiere a Linux sólo al kernel.
e) Linux no tiene otra denominación en el mundo.
f) La distribución del paquete Linux es la misma pero cada distribución tiene sus propios esquemas de paquetes, defectos y métodos de configuración.   

CONDITIONAL SENTENCES (PRÁCTICA)

TRANSLATE THE FOLLOWING SENTENCES:


1. If each block has only one place it can appear in the cache, the cache is said to be direct mapped.
2. When a miss occurs, the cache controller must select a block to be replaced with the desired data.

3. If the event occurs at the same place every time the program is executed with the same data and memory allocation, the event is synchronous.

4. If the user task directly had asked for help, it would have been a user-requested event.

5. If an event can be masked or disabled by a user task, it is user maskable. This mask simply controls whether the hardware responds to the exception or not.

6. If the program's execution always stops after the interrupt, it is a terminating event.

7. If the program's execution continues after the interrupt, it is a resuming event.

8. It is easier to implement exceptions that terminate execution, since the machine need not be able to restart execution of the same program after handling the exception.

9. If there were a dependency between two closely spaced instructions in the pipeline, it would stall.

IBM COMPUTERS (Practice)

A. REALICE  LA PRACTICA CON LA INFORMACIÓN DEL TEXTO:

IBM INTRODUCES COMPUTERS TO EASE INTERNET COMMERCE
International Business Machines introduced an upgraded line of computers that are aimed at making it easier for small and medium sized companies to do business on the Internet. The IBM AS/400e series of computer servers, with two times the storage and five times the memory of previous models, is backed by World Wide Web programs and has increased Internet security. It's also designed to ease the use of different software programs and languages like Java, Lotus Domino and ActiveX. The computers use new 8-way and 12-way processors. They use a new release of the OS/400 operating system designed to maximize performance according to the users' needs. The machines are divided into two series of models. One designed for interactive processing and another optimized for batch processing. The enhanced security features include a "Firewall" that controls user access to the Internet as well as protecting non authorized users of the public network from using the resources of the internal network. IBM and other companies are seeking to provide servers, which manage networks of PCs, and computers that make it easier to conduct business over the Internet. Business to business commerce over the global network is expected to rise to 327 billion in 2002 from eight billion this year according to research firm Forester Research.

B. PRACTICA. DIGA SI LAS AFIRMACIONES SON VERDADERAS (True) o FALSAS (False):
1) This is a series of modernized and modified computers ............... True – False
2) These computers are completely new ............................................True – False
3) You can store much more information in these computers .........   True - False
4) World Wide Web has nothing to do with these computers ..........   True - False
5) The languages mentioned here will be unnecessary ....................  True – False
6) Servers are larger computers ........................................................  True – False
7) The OS/400 will be adapted to the users' needs .........................    True - False
8) "Firewall" is used for protection .................................................... True - False
9) IBM does business only with PC networks ................................... True – False
10) Forester expect the global network to grow ...............................  True – False

REVIEW 1 - SIMPLE PRESENT: COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE

COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE

In computer engineering, computer architecture is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements (especially speeds and interconnections) and design implementations for the various parts of a computer — focusing largely on the way by which the central processing unit (CPU) performs internally and accesses addresses in memory.
It may also be defined as the science and art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals.
Computer architecture comprises at least three main subcategories
Instruction set architecture, or ISA, is the abstract image of a computing system that is seen by a machine language (or assembly language) programmer, including the instruction set, memory address modes, processor registers, and address and data formats.
Microarchitecture, also known as Computer organization is a lower level, more concrete, description of the system that involves how the constituent parts of the system are interconnected and how they interoperate in order to implement the ISA. The size of a computer's cache for instance, is an organizational issue that generally has nothing to do with the ISA.
System Design which includes all of the other hardware components within a computing system such as:
system interconnects such as computer buses and switches memory controllers and hierarchies CPU off-load mechanisms such as direct memory access issues like multi-processing.

EXERCISE N° 1: LINUX

Warm Up To Penguins The Zen Of Xen One of the hottest recent topics in the computer industry at this time is virtualization. Products such as VMware and Microsoft’s Virtual PC are trying to take advantage of the increasing demand to run virtual computers on top of a physical host. There are several reasons to do this. If, for example, you need to run a number of different versions of Linux from time to time, you can run them as virtual systems on top of a stable host without worrying about constantly reinstalling or corrupting your system. For businesses, virtual machines let many users share a single physical host. Because a system rarely runs at 100% load all the time, you can usually load-balance and get more bang for your hardware buck with virtual systems. Linux, of course, has a virtualization application, too: Xen. Xen is an open-source project organized by XenSource which is in turn owned by Citrix, known for GotoMyPC among others. Xen consists of a hypervisor, which is simply a software package that enables virtual hosts to run on Linux, and the virtual hosts themselves. If you’ve ever used VMware, there are some significant differences between how VMware (and Virtual PC) handles virtualization and how Xen does it. For example, VMware runs as a program (or service) that the virtual hosts run inside, but Xen actually is part of the Linux Kernel. The “host” machine is just another virtual machine (or domain, as Xen calls them) running on the hardware. Although this may seem a bit strange conceptually, it seems to pay off performance-wise.

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/

REVIEW 2- SIMPLE PAST: HISTORY OF COMPUTING

HISTORY OF COMPUTING

Computing hardware has been an important component of the process of calculation and data storage since it became useful for numerical values to be processed and shared.

Devices to aid computation changed from simple recording and counting devices to the abacus, the slide rule, analog computers, and more recent electronic computers. Even today, an experienced abacus user using a device hundreds of years old can sometimes complete basic calculations more quickly than an unskilled person using an electronic calculator — though for more complex calculations, computers out-perform even the most skilled human.

This article covers major developments in the history of computing hardware, and attempts to put them in context. For a detailed timeline of events, see the computing timeline article. The history of computing article is a related overview and treats methods intended for pen and paper, with or without the aid of tables.

As early as 1725 Basile Bouchon used a perforated paper loop in a loom to establish the pattern to be reproduced on cloth, and in 1726 his co-worker Jean-Baptiste Falcon improved on his design by using perforated paper cards attached to one another for efficiency in adapting and changing the program. The Bouchon-Falcon loom was semi-automatic and required manual feed of the program.

In 1801, Joseph-Marie Jacquard developed a loom in which the pattern being woven was controlled by punched cards. The series of cards could be changed without changing the mechanical design of the loom. This was a landmark point in programmability.

Herman Hollerith invented a tabulating machine using punched cards in the 1880s.
In 1833, Charles Babbage moved on from developing his difference engine to developing a more complete design, the analytical engine, which would draw directly on Jacquard's punched cards for its programming.

In 1890, the United States Census Bureau used punched cards and sorting machines designed by Herman Hollerith, to handle the flood of data from the decennial census mandated by the Constitution. Hollerith's company eventually became the core of IBM. IBM developed punched card technology into a powerful tool for business data-processing and produced an extensive line of specialized unit record equipment. By 1950, the IBM card had become ubiquitous in industry and government. The warning printed on most cards intended for circulation as documents (checks, for example), "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate," became a motto for the post-World War II era.

BLU-RAY DISC (Translation)

BLU-RAY DISC

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience. While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space, so it's possible to fit more data on the disc even though it's the same size as a CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB. Blu-ray is currently supported by more than 180 of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer, recording media, video game and music companies. The format also has broad support from the major movie studios as a successor to today's DVD format. In fact, seven of the eight major movie studios (Disney, Fox, Warner, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM) have released movies in the Blu-ray format and six of them (Disney, Fox, Sony, Warner, Lionsgate and MGM) are releasing their movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. Many studios have also announced that they will begin releasing new feature films on Blu-ray Disc day-and-date with DVD, as well as a continuous slate of catalog titles every month. For more information about Blu-ray movies, check out our Blu-ray movies and Blu-ray reviews section which offers information about new and upcoming Blu-ray releases, as well as what movies are currently available in theBlu-ray format.

Source: www.wikipedia.org.com

COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE

In computer engineering, computer architecture is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements (especially speeds and interconnections) and design implementations for the various parts of a computer — focusing largely on the way by which the central processing unit (CPU) performs internally and accesses addresses in memory.
It may also be defined as the science and art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals.

Computer architecture comprises at least three main subcategories:
Instruction set architecture, or ISA, is the abstract image of a computing system that is seen by a machine language (or assembly language) programmer, including the instruction set, memory address modes, processor registers, and address and data formats.Microarchitecture, also known as Computer organization is a lower level, more concrete, description of the system that involves how the constituent parts of the system are interconnected and how they interoperate in order to implement the ISA[2]. The size of a computer's cache for instance, is an organizational issue that generally has nothing to do with the ISA.
System Design which includes all of the other hardware components within a computing system such as: system interconnects such as computer buses and switches memory controllers and hierarchies
CPU off-load mechanisms such as direct memory Access issues like multi-processing.
Once both ISA and microarchitecture has been specified, the actual device needs to be designed into hardware. This design process is often called implementation. Implementation is usually not considered architectural definition, but rather hardware design engineering.
Implementation can be further broken down into three pieces:
Logic Implementation/Design - where the blocks that were defined in the microarchitecture are implemented as logic equations.
Circuit Implementation/Design - where speed critical blocks or logic equations or logic gates are implemented at the transistor level.
Physical Implementation/Design - where the circuits are drawn out, the different circuit components are placed in a chip floor-plan or on a board and the wires connecting them are routed.
For CPUs, the entire implementation process is often called CPU design.
More specific usages of the term include more general wider-scale hardware architectures, such as cluster computing and Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) architectures.