1.
Toronto Stock Exchange
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Toronto Stock Exchange is one of the worlds largest stock exchanges. It is the ninth largest exchange in the world by market capitalization, based in Toronto, it is owned by and operated as a subsidiary of the TMX Group for the trading of senior equities. A broad range of businesses from Canada and abroad are represented on the exchange, in addition to conventional securities, the exchange lists various exchange-traded funds, split share corporations, income trusts and investment funds. More mining and oil and gas companies are listed on Toronto Stock Exchange than any other stock exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange likely descended from the Association of Brokers, a group formed by Toronto businessmen on July 26,1852. No records of the transactions have survived. On October 25,1861, twenty-four men gathered at the Masonic Hall to create the Toronto Stock Exchange, the exchange was incorporated by an act of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1878. The TSX grew continuously in size and in shares traded, save for a period in 1914 when the exchange was shut down for fear of financial panic due to World War I. In 1934, the Toronto Stock Exchange merged with its key competitor, the merged markets kept the Toronto Stock Exchange name. The TSX opened its new trading floor and headquarters in an Art Deco building on Bay Street in 1937, in 1977, the TSX introduced CATS, an automated trading system, and began to use it for the quotation of less liquid equities. In 1983, the TSX vacated its Art Deco headquarters on Bay Street, the old TSX building later became the Design Exchange, a museum and education centre. On April 23,1997, the TSXs trading floor closed, making it the second-largest stock exchange in North America to choose a floorless, in 1999, the Toronto Stock Exchange announced the appointment of Barbara G. Stymiest to the position of President & Chief Executive Officer. Through a realignment plan, Toronto Stock Exchange became Canadas sole exchange for the trading of senior equities, the Canadian Dealing Network, Winnipeg Stock Exchange, and equities portion of the Montreal Exchange later merged with CDNX. In 2000, the Toronto Stock Exchange became a for-profit company, in 2001, the Toronto Stock Exchange acquired the Canadian Venture Exchange, which was renamed the TSX Venture Exchange in 2002, this resulted in the creation of a parent to the TSX, the TSX Group. This ended 123 years of the usage of TSE as a Canadian stock exchange, on May 11,2007, the S&P/TSX Composite, the main index of the Toronto Stock Exchange, traded above the 14,000 point level for the first time ever. On December 17,2008, the TSX for the first time in history was closed for a trading day due to a technical glitch.9 trillion. Xavier Rolet, who is CEO of the LSE Group, would head the new enlarged company, based on data from December 30,2010 the new stock exchange would have been the second largest in the world with a market cap 48% greater than the Nasdaq. 8 of the 15 board members of the entity will be appointed by LSE. The provisional name for the group would be LTMX Group plc
2.
NASDAQ
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The Nasdaq Stock Market is an American stock exchange. It is the second-largest exchange in the world by market capitalization, the exchange platform is owned by Nasdaq, Inc. which also owns the Nasdaq Nordic and Nasdaq Baltic stock market network and several other US stock and options exchanges. When it was founded, NASDAQ stood for the acronym of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, NASDAQ was founded in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers, which divested itself of NASDAQ in a series of sales in 2000 and 2001. The Nasdaq Stock Market is owned and operated by Nasdaq, Inc. the stocks of which were listed on its own stock exchange marketing July 2,2002, when the Nasdaq Stock Market began trading on February 8,1971, it was the worlds first electronic stock market. At first, it was merely a system and did not provide a way to perform electronic trades. The Nasdaq Stock Market helped lower the spread but was unpopular among brokerages which made much of their money on the spread. As late as 1987, the NASDAQ exchange was still referred to as OTC in media. Over the years, the Nasdaq Stock Market became more of a market by adding trade and volume reporting. The Nasdaq Stock Market attracted new companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Oracle and Dell. Its main index is the NASDAQ Composite, which has published since its inception. In 1992, the Nasdaq Stock Market joined with the London Stock Exchange to form the first intercontinental linkage of securities markets, the National Association of Securities Dealers spun off the Nasdaq Stock Market in 2000 to form a publicly traded company. In 2006, the status of the Nasdaq Stock Market was changed from a market to a licensed national securities exchange. In 2007, Nasdaq merged with OMX, an exchange operator in the Nordic countries, expanded its global footprint. NASDAQ OMX could be looking to acquire the American exchanges cash equities business, at the time, NYSE Euronext’s market value was $9.75 billion. Nasdaq was valued at $5.78 billion, while ICE was valued at $9.45 billion. Late in the month, Nasdaq was reported to be considering asking either ICE or the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to join in what would probably have to be, if it proceeded, an $11–12 billion counterbid. The European Association of Securities Dealers Automatic Quotation System was founded as a European equivalent to the Nasdaq Stock Market and it was purchased by NASDAQ in 2001 and became NASDAQ Europe. Operations were shut down, however, as a result of the burst of the dot-com bubble, in 2007, NASDAQ Europe was revived as Equiduct, and is currently operating under Börse Berlin
3.
Advanced Micro Devices
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While initially it manufactured its own processors, the company became fabless after GlobalFoundries was spun off in 2009. AMDs main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and graphics processors for servers, workstations and personal computers, AMD is the second-largest supplier and only significant rival to Intel in the market for x86-based microprocessors. Since acquiring ATI in 2006, AMD and its competitor Nvidia have dominated the discrete Graphics Processing Unit market, Advanced Micro Devices was formally incorporated on May 1,1969, by Jerry Sanders, along with seven of his colleagues from Fairchild Semiconductor. In September 1969, AMD moved from its location in Santa Clara to Sunnyvale. To immediately secure a base, AMD initially became a second source supplier of microchips designed by Fairchild. AMD first focused on producing logic chips, in November 1969, the company manufactured its first product, the Am9300, a 4-bit MSI shift register, which began selling in 1970. Also in 1970, AMD produced its first proprietary product, the Am2501 logic counter and its best-selling product in 1971 was the Am2505, the fastest multiplier available. In 1971, AMD entered the RAM chip market, beginning with the Am3101 and that year AMD also greatly increased the sales volume of its linear integrated circuits, and by year end the companys total annual sales reached $4.6 million. AMD went public in September 1972, the company was a second source for Intel MOS/LSI circuits by 1973, with products such as Am14/1506 and Am14/1507, dual 100-bit dynamic shift registers. By 1975, AMD was producing 212 products – of which 49 were proprietary, including the Am9102, Intel had created the first microprocessor, its 4-bit 4004, in 1971. By 1975, AMD entered the market with the Am9080, a reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 8080. In 1977, AMD entered into a joint venture with Siemens, Siemens purchased 20% of AMDs stock, giving AMD an infusion of cash to increase its product lines. When the two companies vision for Advanced Micro Computers diverged, AMD bought out Siemens stake in the U. S. division in 1979, AMD closed its Advanced Micro Computers subsidiary in late 1981, after switching focus to manufacturing second-source Intel x86 microprocessors. Total sales in fiscal year 1978 topped $100 million, and in 1979, in 1980, AMD began supplying semiconductor products for telecommunications, an industry undergoing rapid expansion and innovation. Intel had introduced the first x86 microprocessors in 1978, in 1981, IBM created its PC, and wanted Intels x86 processors, but only under the condition that Intel also provide a second-source manufacturer for its patented x86 microprocessors. Intel and AMD entered into a 10-year technology exchange agreement, first signed in October 1981, the technical information and licenses needed to make and sell a part would be exchanged for a royalty to the developing company. The 1982 agreement also extended the 1976 AMD–Intel cross-licensing agreement through 1995, the agreement included the right to invoke arbitration of disagreements, and after five years the right of either party to end the agreement with one years notice. It also continued its successful concentration on proprietary bipolar chips, in 1983, it introduced INT. STD.1000, the highest manufacturing quality standard in the industry
4.
AMD
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While initially it manufactured its own processors, the company became fabless after GlobalFoundries was spun off in 2009. AMDs main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and graphics processors for servers, workstations and personal computers, AMD is the second-largest supplier and only significant rival to Intel in the market for x86-based microprocessors. Since acquiring ATI in 2006, AMD and its competitor Nvidia have dominated the discrete Graphics Processing Unit market, Advanced Micro Devices was formally incorporated on May 1,1969, by Jerry Sanders, along with seven of his colleagues from Fairchild Semiconductor. In September 1969, AMD moved from its location in Santa Clara to Sunnyvale. To immediately secure a base, AMD initially became a second source supplier of microchips designed by Fairchild. AMD first focused on producing logic chips, in November 1969, the company manufactured its first product, the Am9300, a 4-bit MSI shift register, which began selling in 1970. Also in 1970, AMD produced its first proprietary product, the Am2501 logic counter and its best-selling product in 1971 was the Am2505, the fastest multiplier available. In 1971, AMD entered the RAM chip market, beginning with the Am3101 and that year AMD also greatly increased the sales volume of its linear integrated circuits, and by year end the companys total annual sales reached $4.6 million. AMD went public in September 1972, the company was a second source for Intel MOS/LSI circuits by 1973, with products such as Am14/1506 and Am14/1507, dual 100-bit dynamic shift registers. By 1975, AMD was producing 212 products – of which 49 were proprietary, including the Am9102, Intel had created the first microprocessor, its 4-bit 4004, in 1971. By 1975, AMD entered the market with the Am9080, a reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 8080. In 1977, AMD entered into a joint venture with Siemens, Siemens purchased 20% of AMDs stock, giving AMD an infusion of cash to increase its product lines. When the two companies vision for Advanced Micro Computers diverged, AMD bought out Siemens stake in the U. S. division in 1979, AMD closed its Advanced Micro Computers subsidiary in late 1981, after switching focus to manufacturing second-source Intel x86 microprocessors. Total sales in fiscal year 1978 topped $100 million, and in 1979, in 1980, AMD began supplying semiconductor products for telecommunications, an industry undergoing rapid expansion and innovation. Intel had introduced the first x86 microprocessors in 1978, in 1981, IBM created its PC, and wanted Intels x86 processors, but only under the condition that Intel also provide a second-source manufacturer for its patented x86 microprocessors. Intel and AMD entered into a 10-year technology exchange agreement, first signed in October 1981, the technical information and licenses needed to make and sell a part would be exchanged for a royalty to the developing company. The 1982 agreement also extended the 1976 AMD–Intel cross-licensing agreement through 1995, the agreement included the right to invoke arbitration of disagreements, and after five years the right of either party to end the agreement with one years notice. It also continued its successful concentration on proprietary bipolar chips, in 1983, it introduced INT. STD.1000, the highest manufacturing quality standard in the industry
5.
Markham, Ontario
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Markham is a city in the Regional Municipality of York within the Greater Toronto Area of Southern Ontario, Canada. Markhams population in 2015 was estimated at 342,000 through The Region of York population census data monitoring, the city is the fourth-most populous community within the Greater Toronto Area after Toronto, Mississauga and Brampton and is the York regions most populous municipality. Markham is also Canadas 16th largest city, Markham changed its status from town to city on July 1,2012. The city gained its name from the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, who named the area after his friend, William Markham, the Archbishop of York from 1776 to 1807. The first European settlement in Markham occurred when William Berczy, a German artist and developer, while they planned to settle in New York, disputes over finances and land tenure led Berczy to negotiate with Simcoe for 64,000 acres in Markham Township in 1794. Through much of Markhams history the community has been described as an agricultural community, a turn towards a more urbanized community within the township began after World War II when the township began to feel the effects of urban encroachment from Toronto. The completion of Highway 404 during the mid-1970s accelerated urban development in Markham, as of 2013 tertiary industry mainly drives Markham. As of 2010 business services employed the largest proportion of workers in Markham – nearly 22% of its labour force, the city also has over 1,100 technology and life-sciences companies, with IBM as the citys largest employer. Each family was granted 200 acres of land, however the lack of roads in the region led many to settle in York, German Mills later became a ghost town. Between 1803 and 1812, another attempt at settling the region was made, the largest group of settlers were Pennsylvania Dutch, most of whom were Mennonites. These highly skilled craftsmen and knowledgeable farmers settled the region and founded Reesorville, in 1825, Reesorville was renamed to Markham having taken the name of the unincorporated village. By 1830, a number of Irish, Scottish and English families began immigrating to Upper Canada. Markhams early years blended the rigours of the frontier with the development of agriculture-based industries, the many rivers and streams in the township soon supported water-powered saw and gristmills and later wooden mills. With improved transportation routes, such as the construction of Yonge Street in the 1800s, in 1842 the township population was 5,698,29,005 acres were under cultivation, and the township had eleven gristmills and twenty-four sawmills. By 1850, the first form of structured municipal government formed in Markham, by 1857, most of the township had been cleared of timber and was under cultivation. Villages like Thornhill, Unionville, and Markham greatly expanded, in 1851 Markham Village was a considerable village, containing between eight and nine hundred inhabitants, pleasantly situated on the Rouge River. A woollen factory, oatmeal mill, barley mill, and distillery, foundry, a temperance hall and four churches. In 1972, Markham was incorporated as a town, as its population skyrocketed due to urban sprawl from Toronto, in 1976, Markhams population was approximately 56,000
6.
Ontario
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Ontario, one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada, is located in east-central Canada. It is Canadas most populous province by a margin, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all Canadians. Ontario is fourth-largest in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and it is home to the nations capital city, Ottawa, and the nations most populous city, Toronto. There is only about 1 km of land made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border. Ontario is sometimes divided into two regions, Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario. The great majority of Ontarios population and arable land is located in the south, in contrast, the larger, northern part of Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and is heavily forested. The province is named after Lake Ontario, a thought to be derived from Ontarí, io, a Huron word meaning great lake, or possibly skanadario. Ontario has about 250,000 freshwater lakes, the province consists of three main geographical regions, The thinly populated Canadian Shield in the northwestern and central portions, which comprises over half the land area of Ontario. Although this area mostly does not support agriculture, it is rich in minerals and in part covered by the Central and Midwestern Canadian Shield forests, studded with lakes, Northern Ontario is subdivided into two sub-regions, Northwestern Ontario and Northeastern Ontario. The virtually unpopulated Hudson Bay Lowlands in the north and northeast, mainly swampy. Southern Ontario which is further sub-divided into four regions, Central Ontario, Eastern Ontario, Golden Horseshoe, the highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at 693 metres above sea level located in Temagami, Northeastern Ontario. In the south, elevations of over 500 m are surpassed near Collingwood, above the Blue Mountains in the Dundalk Highlands, the Carolinian forest zone covers most of the southwestern region of the province. A well-known geographic feature is Niagara Falls, part of the Niagara Escarpment, the Saint Lawrence Seaway allows navigation to and from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario occupies roughly 87 percent of the area of the province. Point Pelee is a peninsula of Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario that is the southernmost extent of Canadas mainland, Pelee Island and Middle Island in Lake Erie extend slightly farther. All are south of 42°N – slightly farther south than the border of California. The climate of Ontario varies by season and location, the effects of these major air masses on temperature and precipitation depend mainly on latitude, proximity to major bodies of water and to a small extent, terrain relief. In general, most of Ontarios climate is classified as humid continental, Ontario has three main climatic regions
7.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
8.
Graphics processing unit
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GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present on a video card, the term GPU was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as the worlds first GPU, or Graphics Processing Unit. It was presented as a processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping. Rival ATI Technologies coined the visual processing unit or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700 in 2002. Arcade system boards have been using specialized graphics chips since the 1970s, in early video game hardware, the RAM for frame buffers was expensive, so video chips composited data together as the display was being scanned out on the monitor. Fujitsus MB14241 video shifter was used to accelerate the drawing of sprite graphics for various 1970s arcade games from Taito and Midway, such as Gun Fight, Sea Wolf, the Namco Galaxian arcade system in 1979 used specialized graphics hardware supporting RGB color, multi-colored sprites and tilemap backgrounds. The Galaxian hardware was used during the golden age of arcade video games, by game companies such as Namco, Centuri, Gremlin, Irem, Konami, Midway, Nichibutsu, Sega. In the home market, the Atari 2600 in 1977 used a video shifter called the Television Interface Adaptor,6502 machine code subroutines could be triggered on scan lines by setting a bit on a display list instruction. ANTIC also supported smooth vertical and horizontal scrolling independent of the CPU and it became one of the best known of what were known as graphics processing units in the 1980s. The Williams Electronics arcade games Robotron,2084, Joust, Sinistar, in 1985, the Commodore Amiga featured a custom graphics chip, with a blitter unit accelerating bitmap manipulation, line draw, and area fill functions. Also included is a coprocessor with its own instruction set, capable of manipulating graphics hardware registers in sync with the video beam. In 1986, Texas Instruments released the TMS34010, the first microprocessor with on-chip graphics capabilities and it could run general-purpose code, but it had a very graphics-oriented instruction set. In 1990-1992, this chip would become the basis of the Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture Windows accelerator cards, in 1987, the IBM8514 graphics system was released as one of the first video cards for IBM PC compatibles to implement fixed-function 2D primitives in electronic hardware. Fujitsu later competed with the FM Towns computer, released in 1989 with support for a full 16,777,216 color palette, in 1988, the first dedicated polygonal 3D graphics boards were introduced in arcades with the Namco System 21 and Taito Air System. In 1991, S3 Graphics introduced the S3 86C911, which its designers named after the Porsche 911 as an implication of the performance increase it promised. The 86C911 spawned a host of imitators, by 1995, all major PC graphics chip makers had added 2D acceleration support to their chips. By this time, fixed-function Windows accelerators had surpassed expensive general-purpose graphics coprocessors in Windows performance, throughout the 1990s, 2D GUI acceleration continued to evolve. As manufacturing capabilities improved, so did the level of integration of graphics chips, arcade systems such as the Sega Model 2 and Namco Magic Edge Hornet Simulator in 1993 were capable of hardware T&L years before appearing in consumer graphics cards
9.
Chipset
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In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components in an integrated circuit that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. It is usually found on the motherboard, chipsets are usually designed to work with a specific family of microprocessors. Because it controls communications between the processor and external devices, the plays a crucial role in determining system performance. In computing, the term commonly refers to a set of specialized chips on a computers motherboard or an expansion card. In personal computers, the first chipset for the IBM PC AT of 1984 was the NEAT chipset developed by Chips, in home computers, game consoles and arcade-game hardware of the 1980s and 1990s, the term chipset was used for the custom audio and graphics chips. Examples include the Commodore Amigas Original Chip Set or SEGAs System 16 chipset, the term chipset often refers to a specific pair of chips on the motherboard, the northbridge and the southbridge. The northbridge links the CPU to very high-speed devices, especially RAM and graphics controllers, in many modern chipsets, the southbridge contains some on-chip integrated peripherals, such as Ethernet, USB, and audio devices. Motherboards and their chipsets often come from different manufacturers, as of 2015, manufacturers of chipsets for x86 motherboards include AMD, Broadcom, Intel, NVIDIA, SiS and VIA Technologies. Apple computers and Unix workstations have traditionally used custom-designed chipsets, some server manufacturers also develop custom chipsets for their products. In the 1980s Chips and Technologies pioneered the manufacturing of chipsets for PC-compatible computers, computer systems produced since then often share commonly used chipsets, even across widely disparate computing specialties. For example, the NCR 53C9x, a low-cost chipset implementing a SCSI interface to devices, could be found in Unix machines such as the MIPS Magnum, embedded devices. Traditionally in x86 computers, the primary connection to the rest of the machine is through the motherboard chipsets northbridge. The northbridge is directly responsible for communications with high-speed devices and conversely any system communication back to the processor and this connection between the processor and northbridge is traditionally known as the front side bus. Requests to resources not directly controlled by the northbridge are offloaded to the southbridge, the southbridge traditionally handles everything else, generally lower-speed peripherals and board functions such as USB, parallel and serial communications. The connection between the northbridge and southbridge does not have a name, but is usually a high-speed interconnect proprietary to the chipset vendor. This made processor performance highly dependent on the chipset, especially the northbridges memory performance. In 2003, however, AMDs introduction of the Athlon 64-bit series of processors changed this, Intel followed suit in 2008 with the release of its Core i series CPUs and the X58 platform. In newer processors integration has increased, primarily through the inclusion of the systems primary PCIe controller
10.
TV tuner card
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A TV tuner card is a kind of television tuner that allows television signals to be received by a computer. Most TV tuners also function as video cards, allowing them to record television programs onto a hard disk much like the digital video recorder does. The interfaces for TV tuner cards are most commonly either PCI bus expansion card or the newer PCI Express bus for many modern cards, in addition, some video cards double as TV tuners, notably the ATI All-In-Wonder series. The card contains a tuner and an analog-to-digital converter along with demodulation, some lower-end cards lack an onboard processor and, like a Winmodem, rely on the systems CPU for demodulation. More advanced TV tuners encode the signal to Motion JPEG or MPEG, some cards also have analog input and many also provide a radio tuner. A hybrid tuner has one tuner that can be configured to act as an analog tuner or a digital tuner, switching between the systems is fairly easy, but cannot be done immediately. The card operates as a digital tuner or an analog tuner until reconfigured and this is similar to a hybrid tuner, except there are two separate tuners on the card. One can watch analog while recording digital, or vice versa, the card operates as an analog tuner and a digital tuner simultaneously. The advantages over two separate cards are cost and utilization of expansion slots in the computer, as many regions around the world convert from analog to digital broadcasts, these tuners are gaining popularity. Like the analog cards, the Hybrid and Combo tuners can have specialized chips on the card to perform the encoding. The tuner cards with this hardware encoding are generally thought of as being higher quality, small USB tuner sticks have become more popular in 2006 and 2007 and are expected to increase in popularity. These small tuners generally do not have hardware encoding due to size, many TV tuners can function as FM radios, this is because there are similarities between broadcast television and FM radio. The FM radio spectrum is close to that used by VHF terrestrial TV broadcasts, and many broadcast television systems around the world use FM audio. So listening to an FM radio station is simply a case of configuring existing hardware. S, there is also a converter for watching DVB-H in Europe and elsewhere via WiFi streaming video. Video capture cards are a class of video capture devices designed to directly into expansion slots in personal computers and servers. Models from many manufacturers are available, all comply with one of the popular host bus standards including PCI and these cards typically include one or more software drivers to expose the cards features, via various operating systems, to software applications that further process the video for specific purposes. As a class, the cards are used to capture baseband analog composite video, S-Video, some specialized cards support digital video via digital video delivery standards including Serial Digital Interface and, more recently, the emerging HDMI standard. These models often support both standard definition and high definition variants, while most PCI and PCI-Express capture devices are dedicated to that purpose, AGP capture devices are usually included with the graphics adapted on the board as an all-in-one package
11.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common
12.
Net income
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In business, net income is an entitys income minus cost of goods sold, expenses and taxes for an accounting period. In the context of the presentation of financial statements, the IFRS Foundation defines net income as synonymous with profit, net income is a distinct accounting concept from profit but the same as net profit. Net income can also be calculated by adding a companys operating income to non-operating income, net income can be distributed among holders of common stock as a dividend or held by the firm as an addition to retained earnings. As profit and earnings are used synonymously for income, net earnings, often, the term income is substituted for net income, yet this is not preferred due to the possible ambiguity. Net income is called the bottom line because it is typically found on the last line of a companys income statement. The items deducted will typically include tax expense, financing expense, likewise, preferred stock dividends will be subtracted too, though they are not an expense. For a merchandising company, subtracted costs may be the cost of goods sold, sales discounts, for a product company advertising, manufacturing, and design and development costs are included
13.
Research and development
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Research and development, also known in Europe as research and technical development, is a general term for activities in connection with corporate or governmental innovation. Research and development is situated at the front end of the life cycle. R&D differs from the vast majority of activities in that it is not intended to yield immediate profit, and generally carries greater risk. New product design and development is more often not a crucial factor in the survival of a company. In an industry that is changing fast, firms must continually revise their design and this is necessary due to continuous technology change and development as well as other competitors and the changing preference of customers. Without an R&D program, a firm must rely on strategic alliances, acquisitions, a system driven by marketing is one that puts the customer needs first, and produces goods that are known to sell. Market research is carried out, which establishes what is needed, if the development is technology driven R&D is directed toward developing products to meet the unmet need. Statistics on organizations devoted to R&D may express the state of an industry, some common measures include, budgets, numbers of patents or on rates of peer-reviewed publications. Bank ratios are one of the best measures, because they are maintained, public. In the United States, a ratio of research and development for an industrial company is about 3. 5% of revenues. A high technolog company, such as a manufacturer, might spend 7% or a pharmaceutical companies such as Merck & Co.14. 1% or Novartis 15. 1%. That is, gross profits will be as much as 90% of the sales cost, with manufacturing costing only 10% of the product price, most industrial companies get 40% revenues only. On a technical level, high tech organizations explore ways to re-purpose and they often reuse advanced manufacturing processes, expensive safety certifications, specialized embedded software, computer-aided design software, electronic designs and mechanical subsystems. Research from 2000 has shown that firms with a persistent R&D strategy outperform those with an irregular or no R&D investment program. Research and development are very difficult to manage, since the feature of research is that the researchers do not know in advance exactly how to accomplish the desired result. As a result, higher R&D spending does not guarantee more creativity, research is the most risky financing area because both the development of an invention and its successful realization carries uncertainty including the profitability of the invention. One way of reducing the uncertainty of researching know-hows is to obtain already researched know-hows, president Barack Obama requested $147.696 billion for research & development in FY2012. Much of this spending was devoted to research on the mechanisms of disease
14.
Outsourcing
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In business, outsourcing involves the contracting out of a business process and operational, and/or non-core functions to another party. The concept outsourcing came from the American Glossary outside resourcing and it dates back to at least 1981, Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another, but not always. Outsourcing is also the practice of handing control of public services to private enterprise. Outsourcing includes both foreign and domestic contracting, and sometimes includes offshoring or nearshoring, many people confuse outsourcing and offshoring – however they are different. A company can outsource and not offshore to a distant country, for example, in 2003 Procter and Gamble outsourced their facilities management support, but it did not involve offshoring. Financial savings from lower international labor rates can provide a major motivation for outsourcing or offshoring, there can be tremendous savings from lower international labor rates when offshoring. The opposite of outsourcing, insourcing, entails bringing processes handled by third-party firms in-house, however, a business can provide a contract service to another organization without necessarily insourcing that business process. Two organizations may enter into an agreement involving an exchange of services, expertise. Outsourcing is said to help firms to perform well in their core competencies, fuel innovation, in the early 21st century, businesses increasingly outsourced to suppliers outside their own country, sometimes referred to as offshoring or offshore outsourcing. and Vested outsourcing. Outsourcing can offer greater flexibility and control. Outsourcing allows organizations to pay for the services and business functions they need and it also reduces the need to hire and train specialized staff, brings in fresh engineering expertise, and can reduce capital and operating expenses and risk. Do what you do best and outsource the rest has become an internationally recognized business tagline first coined and developed in the 1990s by the management consultant Peter Drucker. The slogan was used to advocate outsourcing as a viable business strategy. It has been said that Mr. Drucker began explaining the concept of Outsourcing as early as 1989 in his Wall Street Journal article entitled Sell the Mailroom, from Druckers perspective, a company should only seek to subcontract in those areas in which it demonstrated no special ability. In 2009 by way of recognition, Peter Drucker posthumously received a significant honor, recently, innovative business models have been developed to help reduce the cost for outsourcing. In particular, these models may leverage on group bargaining power by aggregating similar outsourcing demands from various organizations when negotiating with external contractors. The incentive to outsource may be greater for U. S. companies due to unusually high taxes and mandated benefits, like social security, Medicare. At the same time, it appears U. S. companies do not outsource to reduce executive or managerial costs, for instance, executive pay in the United States in 2007 was more than 400 times more than average workers—a gap 20 times bigger than it was in 1965
15.
Manufacturing
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Manufacturing is the value added to production of merchandise for use or sale using labour and machines, tools, chemical and biological processing, or formulation. Manufacturing engineering or manufacturing process are the steps through which raw materials are transformed into a final product, the manufacturing process begins with the product design, and materials specification from which the product is made. These materials are modified through manufacturing processes to become the required part. Manufacturing takes turns under all types of economic systems, in a free market economy, manufacturing is usually directed toward the mass production of products for sale to consumers at a profit. In a collectivist economy, manufacturing is more directed by the state to supply a centrally planned economy. In mixed market economies, manufacturing occurs under some degree of government regulation, modern manufacturing includes all intermediate processes required the production and integration of a products components. Some industries, such as semiconductor and steel manufacturers use the term fabrication instead, the manufacturing sector is closely connected with engineering and industrial design. Examples of major manufacturers in North America include General Motors Corporation, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, General Dynamics, Boeing, Pfizer, examples in Europe include Volkswagen Group, Siemens, and Michelin. Examples in Asia include Sony, Huawei, Lenovo, Toyota, Samsung, in its earliest form, manufacturing was usually carried out by a single skilled artisan with assistants. In much of the world, the guild system protected the privileges. Before the Industrial Revolution, most manufacturing occurred in rural areas, entrepreneurs organized a number of manufacturing households into a single enterprise through the putting-out system. Toll manufacturing is an arrangement whereby a first firm with specialized equipment processes raw materials or semi-finished goods for a second firm, manufacturing provides important material support for national infrastructure and for national defense. On the other hand, most manufacturing may involve significant social and environmental costs, the clean-up costs of hazardous waste, for example, may outweigh the benefits of a product that creates it. Hazardous materials may expose workers to health risks and these costs are now well known and there is effort to address them by improving efficiency, reducing waste, using industrial symbiosis, and eliminating harmful chemicals. The negative costs of manufacturing can also be addressed legally, developed countries regulate manufacturing activity with labor laws and environmental laws. Across the globe, manufacturers can be subject to regulations and pollution taxes to offset the costs of manufacturing activities. Labor unions and craft guilds have played a role in the negotiation of worker rights. Environment laws and labor protections that are available in developed nations may not be available in the third world, tort law and product liability impose additional costs on manufacturing
16.
3dfx Interactive
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3dfx Interactive was a company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the late 1990s until 2000, the companys flagship product was the Voodoo Graphics, an add-in card that accelerated 3D graphics. The hardware accelerated only 3D rendering, relying on the PCs current video card for 2D support, despite this limitation, the Voodoo Graphics product and its follow-up, Voodoo2, were popular. It became standard for 3D games to support for the companys Glide API. 3dfx rapidly declined beginning in the late 1990s and was acquired by Nvidia mostly for intellectual property rights after going bankrupt in 2002, founded in 1994 by Ross Smith, Gary Tarolli and Scott Sellers with backing from Gordie Campbells TechFarm, 3dfx released its Voodoo Graphics chip in 1996. 3dfx gained initial fame in the arcade market, the first arcade machine that 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics hardware was used in was ICE Home Run Derby, a game released in 1996. Later that year it was featured in popular titles, such as Ataris San Francisco Rush. Prior to affordable 3D hardware, games such as Doom and Quake had compelled video game players to move from their 80386s to 80486s, and then to the Pentium. A typical Voodoo Graphics PCI expansion card consisted of a DAC, a frame buffer processor, the RAM and graphics processors operated at 50 MHz. It provided only 3D acceleration and as such the computer also needed a video controller for conventional 2D software. A pass-through VGA cable daisy-chained the video controller to the Voodoo, the method used to engage the Voodoos output circuitry varied between cards, with some using mechanical relays while others utilized purely electronic components. The mechanical relays emitted an audible clicking sound when they engaged and disengaged, the Voodoos primary competition was from PowerVR and Rendition. PowerVR produced a similar 3D-only add-on card with capable 3D support, 3Dfx saw intense competition in the market from cards that offered the combination of 2D and 3D acceleration. While these cards, such as Matrox Mystique, S3 ViRGE and ATI 3D Rage, offered inferior 3D acceleration, their lower cost and this advantage is still in place today. The abstraction layers overhead crippled performance in practice, while there were many games that used Glide, the killer application for Voodoo Graphics was the MiniGL driver developed to allow hardware acceleration of the game Quake by id Software. MiniGL implemented only the subset of OpenGL used by Quake, in August 1997, 3dfx released the Voodoo Rush chipset, combining a Voodoo chip with a 2D chip that lay on the same circuit board, eliminating the need for a separate VGA card. The Rush had the same specifications as Voodoo Graphics, but did not perform as well because the Rush chipset had to share memory bandwidth with the CRTC of the 2D chip. Furthermore, the Rush chipset was not directly present on the PCI bus but had to be programmed through linked registers of the 2D chip, the typical performance hit was around 10% compared to Voodoo Graphics, and even worse in windowed mode
17.
Nvidia
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Nvidia Corporation is an American technology company based in Santa Clara, California. It designs graphics processing units for the market, as well as system on a chip units for the mobile computing. Its primary GPU product line, labeled GeForce, is in competition with Advanced Micro Devices Radeon products. Nvidia expanded its presence in the industry with its handheld SHIELD Portable, SHIELD Tablet. Since 2014, Nvidia has shifted to become a company focused on four markets – gaming, professional visualization, data centers. In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia provides parallel processing capabilities to researchers and they are deployed in supercomputing sites around the world. More recently, It has moved into the computing market. In addition to AMD, its competitors include Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia is now focused on artificial intelligence. The name of the company comes from Invidia in Roman mythology who corresponds to Nemesis, RIVA TNT in 1998 solidified Nvidias reputation for capable hardware. Autumn 1999 saw the release of the GeForce, most notably introducing on-board transformation, running at 120 MHz and featuring four pixel pipelines, it implemented advanced video acceleration, motion compensation and hardware sub-picture alpha blending. The GeForce outperformed existing products by a wide margin, due to the success of its products, Nvidia won the contract to develop the graphics hardware for Microsofts Xbox game console, which earned Nvidia a $200 million advance. However, the project drew the time of many of its best engineers away from other projects, in the short term this did not matter, and the GeForce2 GTS shipped in the summer of 2000. In December 2000, Nvidia reached an agreement to acquire the assets of its one-time rival 3dfx. The acquisition process was finalized in April 2002, in July 2002, Nvidia acquired Exluna for an undisclosed sum. Exluna made software rendering tools and the personnel were merged into the Cg project, in August 2003, Nvidia acquired MediaQ for approximately US$70 million. On April 22,2004, Nvidia acquired iReady, also a provider of high performance TCP/IP, in December 2004, it was announced that Nvidia would assist Sony with the design of the graphics processor in the PlayStation 3 game console. In March 2006, it emerged that Nvidia would deliver RSX to Sony as an IP core, under the agreement, Nvidia would provide ongoing support to port the RSX to Sonys fabs of choice, as well as die shrinks to 65 nm. This practice contrasted with its business arrangement with Microsoft, in which Nvidia managed production, meanwhile, in May 2005 Microsoft chose to license a design by ATI and to make its own manufacturing arrangements for the Xbox 360 graphics hardware, as had Nintendo for the Wii console
18.
AMD Accelerated Processing Unit
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The AMD Accelerated Processing Unit, formerly known as Fusion, is the marketing term for a series of 64-bit microprocessors from AMD designed to act as a CPU and graphics accelerator on a single chip. AMD announced the first generation APUs, Llano for high-performance and Brazos for low-power devices in January 2011, the second-generation Trinity for high-performance and Brazos-2 for low-power devices were announced in June 2012. The third-generation Kaveri for high performance devices was launched in January 2014, while Kabini, the Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One eighth generation video game consoles both use semi-custom third-generation low-power APUs. Although it does not use the name APU, Intels CPUs with integrated HD Graphics are architecturally very similar, the AMD Fusion project started in 2006 with the aim of developing a system on a chip that combined a CPU with a GPU on a single die. AMD took a key step toward realising such a vision when it acquired the graphics chipset manufacturer ATI in 2006, the project reportedly required three internal iterations of the Fusion concept to create a product deemed worthy of release. The first generation desktop and laptop APU, codenamed Llano, was announced on January 4,2011 at the 2011 CES show in Las Vegas and it featured K10 CPU cores and a Radeon HD 6000-series GPU on the same die on the FM1 socket. An APU for low-power devices was announced as the Brazos platform, based on the Bobcat microarchitecture and a Radeon HD 6000-series GPU on the same die. However, it was revealed that AMD had been the subject of a trademark infringement lawsuit by the Swiss company Arctic. The second generation desktop and laptop APU, codenamed Trinity was announced at AMDs Financial Analyst Day 2010 and it featured Piledriver CPU cores and Radeon HD7000 Series GPU cores on the FM2 socket. AMD released a new APU based on the Piledriver microarchitecture on March 12,2013 for Laptops/Mobile, semi-custom chips were introduced in the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 video games consoles. A third generation of the technology was released on 14 January 2014, the desktop and laptop variant is codenamed Kaveri, based on Steamroller architecture, while the low-power variants, codenamed Kabini and Temash, are based on Jaguar architecture. AMD is a member of the HSA Foundation and is consequently actively working on developing the Heterogeneous System Architecture in co-operation with the other members. This architecture allows for the use of graphics accelerators, such as OpenCL, stars AMD K10-cores Integrated Evergreen/VLIW5-based GPU Northbridge PCIe DDR3 memory controller to arbitrate between coherent and non-coherent memory requests. The physical memory is partitioned between the GPU and the CPU, Unified Video Decoder AMD Eyefinity multi-monitor-support The first generation APU, released in June 2011, was used in both desktops and laptops.2 and OpenCL1.2. In performance comparisons against the similarly priced Intel Core i3-2105, the Llano APU was criticised for its poor CPU performance, AMD was later criticised for abandoning Socket FM1 after one generation. Bobcat-based CPU Evergreen/VLIW5-based GPU Northbridge PCIe support, DDR3 SDRAM memory controller to arbitrate between coherent and non-coherent memory requests. The physical memory is partitioned between the GPU and the CPU, Unified Video Decoder The AMD Brazos platform was introduced on January 4,2011 targeting the subnotebook, netbook and low power small form factor markets. It features the 9-watt AMD C-Series APU for netbooks and low power devices as well as the 18-watt AMD E-Series APU for mainstream and value notebooks, all-in-ones and small form factor desktops
19.
Central processing unit
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The computer industry has used the term central processing unit at least since the early 1960s. The form, design and implementation of CPUs have changed over the course of their history, most modern CPUs are microprocessors, meaning they are contained on a single integrated circuit chip. An IC that contains a CPU may also contain memory, peripheral interfaces, some computers employ a multi-core processor, which is a single chip containing two or more CPUs called cores, in that context, one can speak of such single chips as sockets. Array processors or vector processors have multiple processors that operate in parallel, there also exists the concept of virtual CPUs which are an abstraction of dynamical aggregated computational resources. Early computers such as the ENIAC had to be rewired to perform different tasks. Since the term CPU is generally defined as a device for software execution, the idea of a stored-program computer was already present in the design of J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchlys ENIAC, but was initially omitted so that it could be finished sooner. On June 30,1945, before ENIAC was made, mathematician John von Neumann distributed the paper entitled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC and it was the outline of a stored-program computer that would eventually be completed in August 1949. EDVAC was designed to perform a number of instructions of various types. Significantly, the programs written for EDVAC were to be stored in high-speed computer memory rather than specified by the wiring of the computer. This overcame a severe limitation of ENIAC, which was the considerable time, with von Neumanns design, the program that EDVAC ran could be changed simply by changing the contents of the memory. Early CPUs were custom designs used as part of a larger, however, this method of designing custom CPUs for a particular application has largely given way to the development of multi-purpose processors produced in large quantities. This standardization began in the era of discrete transistor mainframes and minicomputers and has accelerated with the popularization of the integrated circuit. The IC has allowed increasingly complex CPUs to be designed and manufactured to tolerances on the order of nanometers, both the miniaturization and standardization of CPUs have increased the presence of digital devices in modern life far beyond the limited application of dedicated computing machines. Modern microprocessors appear in electronic devices ranging from automobiles to cellphones, the so-called Harvard architecture of the Harvard Mark I, which was completed before EDVAC, also utilized a stored-program design using punched paper tape rather than electronic memory. Relays and vacuum tubes were used as switching elements, a useful computer requires thousands or tens of thousands of switching devices. The overall speed of a system is dependent on the speed of the switches, tube computers like EDVAC tended to average eight hours between failures, whereas relay computers like the Harvard Mark I failed very rarely. In the end, tube-based CPUs became dominant because the significant speed advantages afforded generally outweighed the reliability problems, most of these early synchronous CPUs ran at low clock rates compared to modern microelectronic designs. Clock signal frequencies ranging from 100 kHz to 4 MHz were very common at this time, the design complexity of CPUs increased as various technologies facilitated building smaller and more reliable electronic devices
20.
Integrated circuit
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An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece of semiconductor material, normally silicon. The ICs mass production capability, reliability and building-block approach to circuit design ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of using discrete transistors. ICs are now used in all electronic equipment and have revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones, and other home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the small size. These advances, roughly following Moores law, allow a computer chip of 2016 to have millions of times the capacity, ICs have two main advantages over discrete circuits, cost and performance. Cost is low because the chips, with all their components, are printed as a unit by photolithography rather than being constructed one transistor at a time, furthermore, packaged ICs use much less material than discrete circuits. Performance is high because the ICs components switch quickly and consume little power because of their small size, the main disadvantage of ICs is the high cost to design them and fabricate the required photomasks. This high initial cost means ICs are only practical when high production volumes are anticipated, Circuits meeting this definition can be constructed using many different technologies, including thin-film transistor, thick film technology, or hybrid integrated circuit. However, in general usage integrated circuit has come to refer to the single-piece circuit construction originally known as a integrated circuit. Jacobi disclosed small and cheap hearing aids as typical industrial applications of his patent, an immediate commercial use of his patent has not been reported. The idea of the circuit was conceived by Geoffrey Dummer. Dummer presented the idea to the public at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington and he gave many symposia publicly to propagate his ideas, and unsuccessfully attempted to build such a circuit in 1956. A precursor idea to the IC was to create small ceramic squares, Components could then be integrated and wired into a bidimensional or tridimensional compact grid. This idea, which seemed very promising in 1957, was proposed to the US Army by Jack Kilby, however, as the project was gaining momentum, Kilby came up with a new, revolutionary design, the IC. In his patent application of 6 February 1959, Kilby described his new device as a body of semiconductor material … wherein all the components of the circuit are completely integrated. The first customer for the new invention was the US Air Force, Kilby won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit. His work was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009, half a year after Kilby, Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor developed his own idea of an integrated circuit that solved many practical problems Kilbys had not. Noyces design was made of silicon, whereas Kilbys chip was made of germanium, Noyce credited Kurt Lehovec of Sprague Electric for the principle of p–n junction isolation, a key concept behind the IC
21.
IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
22.
Commodore International
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Commodore International was a North American home computer and electronics manufacturer. Commodore International, along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Machines, participated in the development of the computer industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The company developed and marketed one of the worlds best-selling desktop computers, the company that would become Commodore Business Machines, Inc. was founded in 1954 in Toronto as the Commodore Portable Typewriter Company by Polish immigrant and Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel. He moved to Toronto to start production, by the late 1950s a wave of Japanese machines forced most North American typewriter companies to cease business, but Tramiel instead turned to adding machines. In 1955, the company was incorporated as Commodore Business Machines. In 1962, Commodore went public on the New York Stock Exchange, in the late 1960s, history repeated itself when Japanese firms started producing and exporting adding machines. The companys main investor and chairman, Irving Gould, suggested that Tramiel travel to Japan to understand how to compete, instead, he returned with the new idea to produce electronic calculators, which were just coming on the market. Commodore soon had a profitable calculator line and was one of the popular brands in the early 1970s. However, in 1975, Texas Instruments, the supplier of calculator parts, entered the market directly. Commodore obtained an infusion of cash from Gould, which Tramiel used beginning in 1976 to purchase several second-source chip suppliers, including MOS Technology, Inc. in order to assure his supply. He agreed to buy MOS, which was having troubles of its own, through the 1970s, Commodore also produced numerous peripherals and consumer electronic products such as the Chessmate, a chess computer based around a MOS6504 chip, released in 1978. In December 2007 when Tramiel was visiting the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, for the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 and he said, I wanted to call my company General, but theres so many Generals in the U. S. Then I went to Admiral, but that was taken, so I wind up in Berlin, Germany, with my wife, and we were in a cab, and the cab made a short stop, and in front of us was an Opel Commodore. Tramiel gave this account in interviews, but Opels Commodore didnt debut until 1967. Once Chuck Peddle had taken over engineering at Commodore, he convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were already a dead end, from PETs 1977 debut, Commodore would be a computer company. The operational headquarters, where research and development of new products occurred, retained the name Commodore Business Machines, in 1980 Commodore launched production for the European market in Braunschweig. By 1980 Commodore was one of the three largest microcomputer companies, and the largest in the Common Market and this was addressed with the introduction of the VIC-20 in 1981, which was introduced at a cost of US$299 and sold in retail stores. Commodore took out ads featuring William Shatner asking consumers Why buy just a video game
23.
Graphical user interface
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GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces, which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard. The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements, beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices, smartphones and smaller household, office and industrial controls. Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of a GUI is an important part of application programming in the area of human–computer interaction. Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for the logical design of a stored program. Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that the language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks. The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI, typically, users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to the kind of data they hold. The widgets of an interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of users. A model–view–controller allows a structure in which the interface is independent from and indirectly linked to application functions. This allows users to select or design a different skin at will, good user interface design relates to users more, and to system architecture less. Large widgets, such as windows, usually provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, smaller ones usually act as a user-input tool. A GUI may be designed for the requirements of a market as application-specific graphical user interfaces. By the 1990s, cell phones and handheld game systems also employed application specific touchscreen GUIs, newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and multimedia centers, or navigation multimedia center combinations. Sample graphical desktop environments A GUI uses a combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform that users can interact with, a series of elements conforming a visual language have evolved to represent information stored in computers. This makes it easier for people with few computer skills to work with, the most common combination of such elements in GUIs is the windows, icons, menus, pointer paradigm, especially in personal computers. The WIMP style of interaction uses a virtual device to represent the position of a pointing device, most often a mouse. Available commands are compiled together in menus, and actions are performed making gestures with the pointing device, a window manager facilitates the interactions between windows, applications, and the windowing system. The windowing system handles hardware devices such as pointing devices, graphics hardware, window managers and other software combine to simulate the desktop environment with varying degrees of realism. Smaller mobile devices such as personal assistants and smartphones typically use the WIMP elements with different unifying metaphors, due to constraints in space
24.
Hercules Graphics Card
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The Hercules Graphics Card is a computer graphics controller made by Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. that combines IBMs text-only MDA display standard with a bitmapped graphics mode. This allows the HGC to offer high quality text and graphics from a single card. The HGC was very popular, and became a widely supported de facto standard on IBM PC compatibles connected to a monochrome monitor. The HGC standard was used long after more technically capable systems had entered the market, the IBM Personal Computer was launched in 1981 with the Color Graphics Adapter expansion card, and the Monochrome Display And Printer Adapter. The CGA offered two basic operating modes, 320×200 pixel low resolution or a 640x200 pixels high resolution mode, while the low-resolution mode was very comparable to 8-bit home computers of the era, the higher-resolution mode offered a fair advance, used with a suitable monitor. Since CGA was connectable to cheap composite monitors, and even to home TVs, due to a lack of color dot mask and a dedicated connection without ability to run lower resolution displays, monochrome monitors were sharper than color. The MDP also included a Centronics compatible parallel port for printers, many imitations were available, but many of them did not include the parallel port, so the video standard became known as MDA, for Monochrome Display Adapter, since MDP was not applicable. The two graphics standards were partially incompatible, most games only supported CGA, while a few extremely rare business applications only supported MDA. Since business software at the time was based, it could run on either. Most software that used any specific capabilities of either would simply check the settings for monitor type, or check the current video mode. The Hercules card was developed in 1982 by Van Suwannukul, founder of Hercules Computer Technology, the system was created by Suwannukul initially so that he could work on his doctoral thesis on an IBM PC using the Thai alphabet. It was essentially an MDA-compatible monochrome card, but through the use of third-party drivers it could also run most programs written for the CGA cards standard graphics modes. Very large numbers of imitations appeared, including generic clones at very low prices, usually without the printer port, Hercules briefly ran ads implying that use of generic clones of the Hercules card could damage the computer. Programming for the Hercules cards native graphics mode was somewhat hindered by a lack of BIOS support and standardization from IBM—after all, popular IBM PC programs at the time came with their own drivers to allow use of the Hercules graphics mode. Long after its prime, the Hercules card continued to be popular for dual-monitor setups alongside another graphics adapter, some software debuggers could take advantage of an HGC to run the main program on the color monitor and the debugger on the HGC. Later on, the multi-monitor trick became obsolete with OS-related improvements such as the introduction of GUIs for debug commands as an analogy for debug command modules. Horizontal frequency 18.425 ±0.500 kHz, Vertical frequency 50 Hz, like the IBM Monochrome Display Adapter it improved on, the Hercules Graphics Card had both a parallel printer port and a video output port. Its text mode could display 80×25 text characters and was MDA-compatible, as such, it rendered characters in a box of 9×14 pixels, of which 7×11 made out the character itself
25.
Printed circuit board
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Components are generally soldered on the PCB. Advanced PCBs may contain components embedded in the substrate, PCBs can be single sided, double sided or multi-layer. Conductors on different layers are connected with vias, multi-layer PCBs allow for much higher component density. FR-4 glass epoxy is the primary insulating substrate, a basic building block of the PCB is an FR-4 panel with a thin layer of copper foil laminated to one or both sides. In multi-layer boards multiple layers of material are laminated together, printed circuit boards are used in all but the simplest electronic products. Alternatives to PCBs include wire wrap and point-to-point construction, PCBs require the additional design effort to lay out the circuit, but manufacturing and assembly can be automated. Manufacturing circuits with PCBs is cheaper and faster than other wiring methods as components are mounted and wired with one single part. A minimal PCB with a component used for easier prototyping is called a breakout board. When the board has no embedded components it is correctly called a printed wiring board or etched wiring board. However, the printed wiring board has fallen into disuse. A PCB populated with electronic components is called a printed circuit assembly, the IPC preferred term for assembled boards is circuit card assembly, and for assembled backplanes it is backplane assemblies. The term PCB is used both for bare and assembled boards. The world market for bare PCBs exceeded $60.2 billion in 2014, initially PCBs were designed manually by creating a photomask on a clear mylar sheet, usually at two or four times the true size. Starting from the diagram the component pin pads were laid out on the mylar. Rub-on dry transfers of common component footprints increased efficiency, traces were made with self-adhesive tape. Pre-printed non-reproducing grids on the mylar assisted in layout, to fabricate the board, the finished photomask was photolithographically reproduced onto a photoresist coating on the blank copper-clad boards. Modern PCBs are designed with dedicated software, generally in the following steps. Card dimensions and template are decided based on required circuitry and case of the PCB, the positions of the components and heat sinks are determined
26.
Industry Standard Architecture
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Industry Standard Architecture is a retronym term for the 16-bit internal bus of IBM PC/AT and similar computers based on the Intel 80286 and its immediate successors during the 1980s. The bus was backward compatible with the 8-bit bus of the 8088-based IBM PC, originally referred to as the PC/AT-bus it was also termed I/O Channel by IBM. The 16-bit ISA bus was used with 32-bit processors for several years. An attempt to extend it to 32 bits, called Extended Industry Standard Architecture, was not very successful, later buses such as VESA Local Bus and PCI were used instead, often along with ISA slots on the same mainboard. Derivatives of the AT bus structure were and still are used in ATA/IDE, the PCMCIA standard, Compact Flash, the PC/104 bus, compaq created the term Industry Standard Architecture to replace PC compatible. The ISA bus was developed by a led by Mark Dean at IBM as part of the IBM PC project in 1981. It originated as an 8-bit system, the newer 16-bit standard, the IBM AT bus, was introduced in 1984. Therefore, the ISA bus was synchronous with the CPU clock, designed to connect peripheral cards to the motherboard, ISA allows for bus mastering although only the first 16 MB of main memory are available for direct access. The 8-bit bus ran at 4.77 MHz, while the 16-bit bus operated at 6 or 8 MHz IBM RT/PC also used the 16-bit bus. It was also available on some non-IBM compatible machines such as Motorola 68k-based Apollo and Amiga 3000 workstations, the short-lived AT&T Hobbit and later PowerPC based BeBox. MCA had many features that would appear in PCI, the successor of ISA. The system was far more advanced than the AT bus, and computer manufacturers responded with the Extended Industry Standard Architecture and later, in fact, VLB used some electronic parts originally intended for MCA because component manufacturers already were equipped to manufacture them. Both EISA and VLB were backwards-compatible expansions of the AT bus, users of ISA-based machines had to know special information about the hardware they were adding to the system. While a handful of devices were essentially plug-n-play, this was rare, users frequently had to configure several parameters when adding a new device, such as the IRQ line, I/O address, or DMA channel. MCA had done away with this complication, and PCI actually incorporated many of the ideas first explored with MCA, in reality, ISA PnP can be troublesome, and did not become well-supported until the architecture was in its final days. PCI slots were the first physically incompatible expansion ports to directly squeeze ISA off the motherboard, at first, motherboards were largely ISA, including a few PCI slots. By the mid-1990s, the two types were roughly balanced, and ISA slots soon were in the minority of consumer systems. Which was why the software compatible LPC bus was created, in late 2008, even floppy disk drives and serial ports were disappearing, and the extinction of vestigial ISA from chipsets was on the horizon
27.
YUV
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YUV is a color space typically used as part of a color image pipeline. The scope of the terms Y′UV, YUV, YCbCr, YPbPr, etc. is sometimes ambiguous, today, the term YUV is commonly used in the computer industry to describe file-formats that are encoded using YCbCr. The Y′UV model defines a space in terms of one luma. The Y′UV color model is used in the PAL and SECAM composite color video standards, previous black-and-white systems used only luma information. The YPbPr color model used in analog component video and its digital version YCbCr used in video are more or less derived from it. The Y′IQ color space used in the analog NTSC television broadcasting system is related to it, as for etymology, Y, Y′, U, and V are not abbreviations. The use of the letter Y for luminance can be traced back to the choice of X Y Z primaries and this lends itself naturally to the usage of the same letter in luma, which approximates a perceptually uniform correlate of luminance. Likewise, U and V were chosen to differentiate the U and V axes from those in other spaces, see the equations below or compare the historical development of the math. Y′UV was invented when engineers wanted color television in a black-and-white infrastructure and they needed a signal transmission method that was compatible with black-and-white TV while being able to add color. The luma component already existed as the black and white signal, the UV representation of chrominance was chosen over straight R and B signals because U and V are color difference signals. This meant that in a black and white scene the U and V signals would be zero, if R and B were to have been used, these would have non-zero values even in a B&W scene, requiring all three data-carrying signals. In addition, black and white receivers could take the Y′ signal and ignore the signals, making Y′UV backward-compatible with all existing black-and-white equipment. It was necessary to assign a narrower bandwidth to the channel because there was no additional bandwidth available. If some of the information arrived via the chrominance channel. Y′UV signals are created from RGB source. Weighted values of R, G, and B are summed to produce Y′, U and V are computed as scaled differences between Y′ and the B and R values. BT.601 defines the following constants, W R =0.299, W G =1 − W R − W B =0.587, W B =0.114, U max =0.436, V max =0.615. The resulting ranges of Y′, U, and V respectively are, equivalently, substituting values for the constants and expressing them as matrices gives these formulas for BT.601, =, =
28.
RGB color model
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The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three primary colors, red, green and blue. Before the electronic age, the RGB color model already had a theory behind it. Thus an RGB value does not define the same color across devices without some kind of color management, typical RGB input devices are color TV and video cameras, image scanners, video games, and digital cameras. Typical RGB output devices are TV sets of technologies, computer and mobile phone displays, video projectors, multicolor LED displays. Color printers, on the hand are not RGB devices. This article discusses concepts common to all the different color spaces that use the RGB color model, to form a color with RGB, three light beams must be superimposed. Each of the three beams is called a component of color, and each of them can have an arbitrary intensity, from fully off to fully on. The RGB color model is additive in the sense that the three beams are added together, and their light spectra add, wavelength for wavelength. This is essentially opposite to the color model that applies to paints, inks, dyes. When the intensities for all the components are the same, the result is a shade of gray, darker or lighter depending on the intensity. When the intensities are different, the result is a colorized hue, a secondary color is formed by the sum of two primary colors of equal intensity, cyan is green+blue, magenta is red+blue, and yellow is red+green. The RGB color model itself does not define what is meant by red, green and blue colorimetrically, and so the results of mixing them are not specified as absolute, but relative to the primary colors. When the exact chromaticities of the red, green and blue primaries are defined, the normal three kinds of light-sensitive photoreceptor cells in the human eye respond most to yellow, green, and violet light. As an example, suppose that light in the range of wavelengths enters the eye. Light of these wavelengths would activate both the medium and long wavelength cones of the retina, but not equally—the long-wavelength cells will respond more, the difference in the response can be detected by the brain, and this difference is the basis of our perception of orange. Thus, the appearance of an object results from light from the object entering our eye and stimulating the different cones simultaneously. The first experiments with RGB in early color photography were made in 1861 by Maxwell himself, to reproduce the color photograph, three matching projections over a screen in a dark room were necessary
29.
Color space
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A color space is a specific organization of colors. In combination with physical device profiling, it allows for reproducible representations of color, for example, Adobe RGB and sRGB are two different absolute color spaces, both based on the RGB color model. When defining a color space, the reference standard is the CIELAB or CIEXYZ color spaces. For example, although several specific color spaces are based on the RGB color model, colors can be created in printing with color spaces based on the CMYK color model, using the subtractive primary colors of pigment. The resulting 3-D space provides a position for every possible color that can be created by combining those three pigments. Colors can be created on computer monitors with color spaces based on the RGB color model, a three-dimensional representation would assign each of the three colors to the X, Y, and Z axes. Note that colors generated on given monitor will be limited by the medium, such as the phosphor or filters. Another way of creating colors on a monitor is with an HSL or HSV color space, based on hue, saturation, with such a space, the variables are assigned to cylindrical coordinates. Many color spaces can be represented as three-dimensional values in this manner, but some have more, or fewer dimensions, Color space conversion is the translation of the representation of a color from one basis to another. The RGB color model is implemented in different ways, depending on the capabilities of the system used, by far the most common general-used incarnation as of 2006 is the 24-bit implementation, with 8 bits, or 256 discrete levels of color per channel. Any color space based on such a 24-bit RGB model is limited to a range of 256×256×256 ≈16.7 million colors. Some implementations use 16 bits per component for 48 bits total and this is especially important when working with wide-gamut color spaces, or when a large number of digital filtering algorithms are used consecutively. The same principle applies for any color space based on the color model. CIE1931 XYZ color space was one of the first attempts to produce a space based on measurements of human color perception. The CIERGB color space is a companion of CIE XYZ. Additional derivatives of CIE XYZ include the CIELUV, CIEUVW, RGB uses additive color mixing, because it describes what kind of light needs to be emitted to produce a given color. RGB stores individual values for red, green and blue, RGBA is RGB with an additional channel, alpha, to indicate transparency. Common color spaces based on the RGB model include sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, scRGB, one starts with a white substrate, and uses ink to subtract color from white to create an image
30.
3D computer graphics
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Such images may be stored for viewing later or displayed in real-time. 3D computer graphics rely on many of the same algorithms as 2D computer vector graphics in the wire-frame model, 3D computer graphics are often referred to as 3D models. Apart from the graphic, the model is contained within the graphical data file. However, there are differences, a 3D model is the representation of any three-dimensional object. A model is not technically a graphic until it is displayed, a model can be displayed visually as a two-dimensional image through a process called 3D rendering or used in non-graphical computer simulations and calculations. With 3D printing, 3D models are rendered into a 3D physical representation of the model. William Fetter was credited with coining the term computer graphics in 1961 to describe his work at Boeing, 3D computer graphics software began appearing for home computers in the late 1970s. The earliest known example is 3D Art Graphics, a set of 3D computer graphics effects, written by Kazumasa Mitazawa, models can also be produced procedurally or via physical simulation. Basically, a 3D model is formed from points called vertices that define the shape, a polygon is an area formed from at least three vertexes. A polygon of n points is an n-gon, the overall integrity of the model and its suitability to use in animation depend on the structure of the polygons. Before rendering into an image, objects must be out in a scene. This defines spatial relationships between objects, including location and size, Animation refers to the temporal description of an object. These techniques are used in combination. As with animation, physical simulation also specifies motion, rendering converts a model into an image either by simulating light transport to get photo-realistic images, or by applying an art style as in non-photorealistic rendering. The two basic operations in realistic rendering are transport and scattering and this step is usually performed using 3D computer graphics software or a 3D graphics API. Altering the scene into a form for rendering also involves 3D projection. There are a multitude of websites designed to help, educate, some are managed by software developers and content providers, but there are standalone sites as well. These communities allow for members to seek advice, post tutorials, not all computer graphics that appear 3D are based on a wireframe model
31.
ATI Rage
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The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering GUI 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. It is the successor to the Mach series of 2D accelerators, the original 3D RAGE chip was based upon a Mach64 2D core with new 3D functionality and MPEG-1 acceleration. The 3D RAGE was released in April 1996, the 3D RAGE was used in ATIs 3D Xpression video board. The second generation Rage offered roughly two times greater 3D performance and its graphics processor was based again on a re-engineered Mach64 GUI engine that provided optimal 2D performance with either single-cycle EDO memory or high-speed SGRAM. The 3D Rage II chip was an enhanced, pin compatible version of the 3D Rage accelerator, the second-generation PCI-bus compatible chip boosted 2D performance by 20 percent and added support for MPEG-2 playback. The chip also had support for Microsoft Direct3D and Reality Lab, QuickDraw 3D Rave, Criterion RenderWare. OpenGL drivers are available for the professional 3D and CAD community, drivers are also provided in operating systems including Windows 95, Windows NT, the Mac OS, OS/2, and Linux. ATI also shipped a TV encoder companion chip for RAGE II, RAGE II was integrated into several Macintosh Computers, including the Macintosh G3, Power Mac 6500. In IBM-compatible PCs, several motherboards and video used the chipset as well including, the 3D Xpression+, the 3D Pro Turbo. The 3D Rage IIc was the last version of the Rage II core, the Rage IIc was integrated into one Macintosh computer, the original iMac G3/233. Specifications for the Rage II+DVD,60 MHz core up to 83 MHz SGRAM memory 480 MB/s memory bandwidth DirectX5, the 3D Rage Pro chip was designed for Intels Accelerated Graphics Port, taking advantage of execute-mode texturing, command pipelining, sideband addressing, and full 2×-mode protocols. Initial versions relied on standard graphics memory configurations, up to 8 MiB of SGRAM or 16 MB of WRAM, RAGE Pro offered performance in the range of Nvidias RIVA128 and 3dfxs Voodoo accelerator, but generally failed to match or exceed its competitors. This, in addition to its lack of OpenGL support, hurt sales for what was touted to be a solid gaming solution, in reality, early versions of the new driver only delivered increased performance in benchmarks such as Ziff-Davis 3D Winbench 98 and Final Reality. The 3D Rage Pro was mainly sold in the market as the Xpert@Work or the Xpert@Play. It was also the built-in graphic chipset in the Sun Ultra 5/10 workstations and this late 1996 chip was very similar to the Rage II and supported the same application coding. It integrated a low-voltage differential signaling transmitter for notebook LCDs and advanced power management, the RAGE LT PRO, based on the 3D RAGE PRO, was the very first mobile GPU to use AGP. It offered Filtered Ratiometric Expansion, which automatically adjusted images to full-screen size, ATIs ImpacTV2+ is integrated with the RAGE LT PRO chip to support multi-screen viewing, i. e. simultaneous outputs to TV, CRT and LCD. In addition, the RAGE LT PRO can drive two displays with different images and/or refresh rates with the use of integrated dual, independent CRT controllers
32.
DirectX
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Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, the name DirectX was coined as a shorthand term for all of these APIs and soon became the name of the collection. When Microsoft later set out to develop a gaming console, the X was used as the basis of the name Xbox to indicate that the console was based on DirectX technology. Direct3D is widely used in the development of games for Microsoft Windows. Direct3D is also used by software applications for visualization and graphics tasks such as CAD/CAM engineering. As Direct3D is the most widely publicized component of DirectX, it is common to see the names DirectX, the DirectX software development kit consists of runtime libraries in redistributable binary form, along with accompanying documentation and headers for use in coding. Originally, the runtimes were only installed by games or explicitly by the user, Windows 95 did not launch with DirectX, but DirectX was included with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2. Windows 98 and Windows NT4.0 both shipped with DirectX, as has every version of Windows released since, the SDK is available as a free download. While the runtimes are proprietary, closed-source software, source code is provided for most of the SDK samples, starting with the release of Windows 8 Developer Preview, DirectX SDK has been integrated into Windows SDK. In late 1994, Microsoft was ready to release Windows 95, an important factor in the value consumers would place on it was the programs that would be able to run on it. Three Microsoft employees—Craig Eisler, Alex St and this was compounded by negative reception surrounding the Windows port of The Lion King. Microsoft needed a solution for programmers, the operating system was only months away from being released. Eisler, St. John, and Engstrom worked together to fix this problem, the first version of DirectX was released in September 1995 as the Windows Games SDK. It was the Win32 replacement for the DCI and WinG APIs for Windows 3.1, DirectX allowed all versions of Microsoft Windows, starting with Windows 95, to incorporate high-performance multimedia. Eisler wrote about the frenzy to build DirectX1 through 5 in his blog, DirectX2.0 became a component of Windows itself with the releases of Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows NT4.0 in mid-1996. It was at this event that Microsoft first introduced Direct3D and DirectPlay, the DirectX team faced the challenging task of testing each DirectX release against an array of computer hardware and software. A variety of different graphics cards, audio cards, motherboards, CPUs, input devices, games, the DirectX team also built and distributed tests that allowed the hardware industry to confirm that new hardware designs and driver releases would be compatible with DirectX. Prior to DirectX, Microsoft had included OpenGL on their Windows NT platform, at the time, OpenGL required high-end hardware and was focused on engineering and CAD uses
33.
All-in-Wonder
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The All-in-Wonder was a combination graphics card/TV tuner card designed by ATI Technologies. It was introduced on November 11,1996, ATI had previously used the Wonder trademark on other graphics cards, however, they were not full TV/graphics combo cards. ATI also makes other TV oriented cards that use the word Wonder, the All-in-Wonder line debuted with the Rage chipset series. The cards were available in two forms, built by third-party manufacturers as well as by ATI itself, each of the All-in-Wonder Radeon cards is based on a Radeon chipset with extra features incorporated onto the board. AIW cards run at lower speeds than their conventional counterparts to reduce heat. In June 2008, AMD revived the line with an HD model. The cards use a variety of specialised ports along the side to provide output to televisions, with the version provided with composite ports. Later products also comes with a Remote Wonder remote control and a USB RF receiver to receive radio signals from the remote. Some variants of the All-in-Wonder included FM radio tuning as well, some analog-based tuners were bundled with Gemstars Guide Plus+ electronic program guide for TV listings, while digital-based tuners used TitanTV instead. The AIW card drivers are based on ATIs Catalyst drivers with additional T200 unified stream drivers, currently, the only operating systems fully supporting TV capture with these cards are Microsoft Windows XP,2000,98, and 95. Display drivers work on Linux, and TV capture is supported on cards with the GATOS project
34.
Tseng Labs
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Tseng Laboratories, Inc. was a maker of graphics chips and controllers for IBM PC compatibles, based in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and founded by Jack H-N Tseng. Founded in 1983, Tseng Labs first product was designed to allow IBM PCs to run the CP/M Operating System and these extended text modes created a successful niche for TLI - the cards were popularly used by corporations for PCs that also emulated mainframe terminals that displayed 132 columns. The UltraPAK Short was the design for the DFI MG-150. Future Tseng products continued to push beyond mere IBM compatibility, colorPAK - the companys CGA compatible product - offered high resolution 400 line graphics in 1985. The EVA and EVA/480 products of 1986 were the first recorded instances of a chip company extending the IBM register set. EVA products enabled 130 more lines of graphics than IBM EGA, as well as advanced features like hardware accelerated windowing, panning, Tseng migrated from a retail / commercial board supplier to OEM sales of their chips. Tsengs best-known products were the Tseng Labs ET3000, Tseng Labs ET4000 and Tseng Labs ET6000 VGA-compatible graphics chips, the companys ET4000 family was noteworthy for unusually fast host-interface throughput, despite a conventional DRAM framebuffer. Using IMA bus, Tseng created the category of motion video accelerator with a series of video image processing circuits. VIPeR chips provided relatively high quality live and computer generated video, the chips were used in on high-end video solutions from companies like Matrox and Jazz Multimedia. Competitors integrated less elegant algorithms inside their mainstream graphics controllers - a trend Tseng followed with its generation of chips. Tseng was a victim of the graphics card shakeout of the mid-1990s, losing market share to S3 Graphics, Tseng was especially late to integrate a RAMDAC into its product-line, not succeeding until the ET6000. In the later years of the ET4000s lifetime, the lack of an integrated RAMDAC severely hurt Tsengs competitiveness and this strategy eventually resulted in the company’s engineers and graphics expertise being purchased by ATI in December 1997. Tsengs management chose to use the proceeds of the sale, along with the cash reserves, to invest in a start-up
35.
Radeon
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The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon Graphics is the successor to the Rage line, three different families of microarchitectures can be roughly distinguished, the fixed-pipeline family and the unified shader model-families of TeraScale and Graphics Core Next. ATI/AMD have developed different technologies, such as TruForm, HyperMemory, HyperZ, XGP, Eyefinity for multi-monitor setups, PowerPlay for power-saving, CrossFire or Hybrid Graphics. A range of SIP blocks is also to be found on models in the Radeon products line, Unified Video Decoder, Video Coding Engine. The brand was only known as ATI Radeon until August 2010. Products up to and including the HD5000 series are branded as ATI Radeon, while the HD6000 series and beyond use the new AMD Radeon branding. On September 11,2015, AMDs GPU business was split into a unit known as Radeon Technologies Group, with Raja Koduri as Senior Vice President. Though it did at one time, AMD does not distribute Radeon cards directly to consumers, instead, it sells Radeon GPUs to third-party manufacturers, who build and sell the Radeon-based video cards to the OEM and retail channels. Manufacturers of the Radeon cards—some of whom also make motherboards—include Sapphire, XFX, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Biostar, Gainward, Diamond, HIS, PowerColor, Club 3D, VisionTek, early generations were identified with a number and major/minor alphabetic prefix. Later generations were assigned code names, new or heavily redesigned architectures have a prefix of R while slight modifications are indicated by the RV prefix. The first derivative architecture, RV200, did not follow the scheme used by later parts, the Radeon, first introduced in 2000, was ATIs first graphics processor to be fully DirectX7 compliant. R100 brought with it gains in bandwidth and fill-rate efficiency through the new HyperZ technology. The RV200 was a die-shrink of the former R100 with some core logic tweaks for clockspeed, introduced in 2002, the only release in this generation was the Radeon 7500, which introduced little in the way of new features but offered substantial performance improvements over its predecessors. ATIs second generation Radeon included a pixel shader architecture. This chipset implemented Microsofts pixel shader 1.4 specification for the first time and its performance relative to competitors was widely perceived as weak, and subsequent revisions of this generation were cancelled in order to focus on development of the next generation. The R300 was the first GPU to fully support Microsofts DirectX9.0 technology upon its release in 2001 and it incorporated fully programmable pixel and vertex shaders. About a year later, the architecture was revised to allow for higher frequencies, more efficient memory access, a budget line of RV350 products was based on this refreshed design with some elements disabled or removed. Models using the new PCI Express interface were introduced in 2004, using 110-nm and 130-nm manufacturing technologies under the X300 and X600 names, respectively, the RV370 and RV380 graphics processors were used extensively by consumer PC manufacturers
36.
GameCube
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The GameCube is a home video game console released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14,2001, in North America on November 18,2001, in Europe on May 3,2002, and in Australia on May 17,2002. The sixth-generation console is the successor to the Nintendo 64 and competed with Sony Computer Entertainments PlayStation 2, the GameCube is the first Nintendo console to use optical discs as its primary storage medium. The discs are similar to the format, as a result of their smaller size and the consoles small disc compartment. Contemporary reception of the GameCube was generally positive, the console was praised for its controller, extensive software library and high-quality games, but was criticized for its exterior design and lack of features. Nintendo sold 21.74 million GameCube units worldwide before it was discontinued in 2007 and its successor, the Wii, which is backwards-compatible with most GameCube software, was released in November 2006. In 1997, a hardware design company called ArtX was launched, staffed by twenty engineers who had previously worked at SGI on the design of the Nintendo 64s graphics hardware. The team was led by Dr. Wei Yen, who had been SGIs head of Nintendo Operations, at Nintendos press conference in May 1999, the console was first publicly announced as Project Dolphin, the successor to the Nintendo 64. At the conference, Nintendos Howard Lincoln said of ArtX, This company is headed up by Dr. Wei Yen, Dr. Yen has assembled at ArtX one of the best teams of 3D graphics engineers on the planet. Subsequently, Nintendo began providing development kits to game developers, Nintendo also formed a strategic partnership with IBM for the production of Dolphins CPU, code-named Gekko. ArtX was acquired by ATI in April 2000, whereupon the Flipper graphics processor design had already mostly completed by ArtX and was not overtly influenced by ATI. In total, ArtX team cofounder Greg Buchner recalled that their portion of the hardware design timeline had arced from inception in 1998 to completion in 2000. Of ATIs acquisition of ArtX, an ATI spokesperson said, ATI now becomes a major supplier to the console market via Nintendo. The Dolphin platform is reputed to be king of the hill in terms of graphics, the console was announced as the Nintendo GameCube at a press conference in Japan on August 24,2000, abbreviated as NGC in Japan and GCN in North America. Nintendo unveiled its software lineup for the console at E32001, focusing on fifteen launch titles, including Luigis Mansion and Star Wars Rogue Squadron II. Several titles that were scheduled to launch with the console were delayed. It is also the first console in the history not to accompany a Mario platform title at launch. Long prior to the launch, Nintendo had developed and patented an early prototype of motion controls for the GameCube. These motion control concepts would not be deployed to consumers for several years, prior to the Nintendo GameCubes release, Nintendo focused resources on the launch of the Game Boy Advance, a handheld game console and successor to the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color
37.
Hollywood (graphics chip)
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Hollywood is the name of the graphics processing unit used in Nintendos Wii video game console. It was designed by ATI, and is manufactured using the same 90 nm CMOS process as the Broadway processor, very few official details were released to the public by Nintendo, ATI, or IBM. The Hollywood GPU is reportedly based on the Nintendo GameCubes Flipper GPU and is clocked 50% higher at 243 MHz, though none of the rates were ever confirmed by Nintendo, IBM. Hollywood is a multi-chip module package containing two dies under the cover, one of the two chips, codenamed Napa, controls the I/O functions, RAM access, the Audio DSP, and the actual GPU with its embedded DRAM, and measures 8 ×9 mm. The other, codenamed Vegas, holds 24 MB of internal 1T-SRAM and measures 13.5 ×7 mm. Hollywood also contains an ARM926 core, which has been unofficially nicknamed Starlet. This embedded microprocessor performs many of the I/O functions, including controlling the functionality, USB, the optical disc drive. It also acts as the security controller of the system, performing encryption and authentication functions, the Hollywood includes hardware implementations of AES and SHA-1, to speed up these functions. Communication with the main CPU is accomplished via an IPC mechanism, the Starlet performs the WiiConnect24 functions while the Wii console is in standby mode
38.
Wii
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The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19,2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii competed with Microsofts Xbox 360, Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others. The Wii introduced the Wii Remote controller, which can be used as a pointing device. Another notable feature of the console is the now defunct WiiConnect24, like other seventh-generation consoles, it features a game download service, called Virtual Console, which features emulated games from past systems. It succeeded the GameCube, and early models are fully backward-compatible with all GameCube games, Nintendo first spoke of the console at the E32004 press conference and later unveiled it at E32005. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata revealed a prototype of the controller at the September 2005 Tokyo Game Show, at E32006, the console won the first of several awards. By December 8,2006, it had completed its launch in the four key markets, in late 2011, Nintendo released a reconfigured model, the Wii Family Edition, which lacks Nintendo GameCube compatibility, this model was not released in Japan. The Wii Mini, Nintendos first major redesign since the compact SNES. The Wii Mini can only play Wii optical discs, as it omits GameCube compatibility and all networking capabilities, the Wiis successor, the Wii U, was released on November 18,2012. On October 20,2013, Nintendo confirmed it had discontinued production of the Wii in Japan and Europe, although the Wii Mini is still in production, the console was conceived in 2001, as the Nintendo GameCube was first released. According to an interview with Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, the concept involved focusing on a new form of player interaction, the consensus was that power isnt everything for a console. Too many powerful consoles cant coexist and its like having only ferocious dinosaurs. They might fight and hasten their own extinction, in 2003, game engineers and designers were brought together to develop the concept further. By 2005 the controller interface had taken form, but a showing at that years Electronic Entertainment Expo was canceled. Miyamoto stated that the company had some troubleshooting to do, so we decided not to reveal the controller and instead we displayed just the console. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata later unveiled and demonstrated the Wii Remote at the September Tokyo Game Show, the Nintendo DS is said to have influenced the Wiis design. Designer Kenichiro Ashida noted, We had the DS on our minds as we worked on the Wii and we thought about copying the DSs touch-panel interface and even came up with a prototype. The idea was rejected because of the notion that the two gaming systems would be identical
39.
Microsoft
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Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup, as of 2016, it was the worlds largest software maker by revenue, and one of the worlds most valuable companies. Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4,1975, to develop and it rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The companys 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion, in June 2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer production market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers. The word Microsoft is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion for computer programming, sought to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which offered a computer that tracked and analyzed automobile traffic data. Allen went on to pursue a degree in science at Washington State University. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systemss Altair 8800 microcomputer, Allen suggested that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device, after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didnt actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter and they officially established Microsoft on April 4,1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the name of Micro-Soft, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, the company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, however, it was MS-DOS that solidified the companys dominance. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOSs available software selection, the company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkins disease, while jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20,1985. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated, in 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office
40.
Xbox 360
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The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the console in the Xbox series. The Xbox 360 competed with Sonys PlayStation 3 and Nintendos Wii as part of the generation of video game consoles. The Xbox 360 was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12,2005, with detailed launch, the Xbox 360 features an online service, Xbox Live, which was expanded from its previous iteration on the original Xbox and received regular updates during the consoles lifetime. In addition to multimedia features, the Xbox 360 allows users to stream media from local PCs. Several peripherals have been released, including controllers, expanded hard drive storage. The release of additional services and peripherals helped the Xbox brand grow from gaming-only to encompassing all multimedia. Launched worldwide across 2005–2006, the Xbox 360 was initially in short supply in many regions, including North America, the earliest versions of the console suffered from a high failure rate, indicated by the so-called Red Ring of Death, necessitating an extension of the devices warranty period. Microsoft released two redesigned models of the console, the Xbox 360 S in 2010, and the Xbox 360 E in 2013. As of June 2014,84 million Xbox 360 consoles have sold worldwide, making it the sixth-highest-selling video game console in history. The Xbox 360s successor, the Xbox One, was released on November 22,2013, on April 20,2016, Microsoft announced that it would end the production of new Xbox 360 hardware, although the company will continue to support the platform. Known during development as Xbox Next, Xenon, Xbox 2, Xbox FS or NextBox, in February 2003, planning for the Xenon software platform began, and was headed by Microsofts Vice President J Allard. That month, Microsoft held an event for 400 developers in Bellevue, also that month, Peter Moore, former president of Sega of America, joined Microsoft. On August 12,2003, ATI signed on to produce the graphic processing unit for the new console, before the launch of the Xbox 360, several Alpha development kits were spotted using Apples Power Mac G5 hardware. This was because the systems PowerPC970 processor running the same PowerPC architecture that the Xbox 360 would eventually run under IBMs Xenon processor, the cores of the Xenon processor were developed using a slightly modified version of the PlayStation 3s Cell Processor PPE architecture. According to David Shippy and Mickie Phipps, the IBM employees were hiding their work from Sony and Toshiba, jeff Minter created the music visualization program Neon which is included with the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 was released on November 22,2005, in the United States and Canada, December 2,2005, in Europe and December 10,2005, in Japan. It was later launched in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and Russia
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Terayon
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Terayon Communication Systems, Inc. was a company that vended equipment to broadband service providers for delivering broadband voice, video and data services to residential and business subscribers. Terayon was founded by Israeli brothers Dr. Zaki and Shlomo Rakib in 1993, Shlomo studied electrical engineering, and Zaki did a PhD in mechanical engineering and post-doctorate studies in applied mathematics. He taught for a while at Tel Aviv University’s computer science faculty, after Helios was sold to Cadence Design Systems, Zaki moved to the US, and urged his brother to join him and set up the company. Terayon held an IPO on NASDAQ in August 1998, in 1999, the company initiated a strategy to expand its offerings to the telecommunication and satellite industries but later refocused its business on the cable industry in 2000. In 2004, Terayon recentered its strategy on digital solutions, marketing to television broadcasters, telecom carriers. Terayon also decided to phase out equipment for home access, such as cable modems, in April 2006, Terayon was delisted from NASDAQ due to outstanding financial reports. Motorola Inc. acquired Terayon for $140 million in June 2007
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$2.222 Billion USD (2005)
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