1.
Computer form factor
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In computing, the form factor is the specification of a motherboard – the dimensions, power supply type, location of mounting holes, number of ports on the back panel, etc. Traditionally, the most significant specification is for that of the motherboard, Small form factors have been developed and implemented. A PC motherboard is the circuit board within a typical desktop computer. For example, the introduction of AGP and, more recently, however, the standardized size and layout of motherboards have changed much more slowly and are controlled by their own standards. The list of components required on a motherboard changes far more slowly than the components themselves, although it is a slower process, form factors do evolve regularly in response to changing demands. IBMs long-standing standard, AT, was superseded in 1995 by the current industry standard ATX, the latest update to the ATX standard was released in 2007. A divergent standard by chipset manufacturer VIA called EPIA is based upon smaller form factors, differences between form factors are most apparent in terms of their intended market sector, and involve variations in size, design compromises and typical features. Most modern computers have similar requirements, so form factor differences tend to be based upon subsets and supersets of these. The smallest motherboards may sacrifice CPU flexibility in favor of a fixed manufacturers choice, ATX case compatible, Different form factors PC/104 is an embedded computer standard which defines both a form factor and computer bus. PC/104 is intended for embedded computing environments, single board computers built to this form factor are often sold by COTS vendors, which benefits users who want a customized rugged system, without months of design and paper work. The PC/104 form factor was standardized by the PC/104 Consortium in 1992, an IEEE standard corresponding to PC/104 was drafted as IEEE P996.1, but never ratified. The 5.75 ×8.0 in Embedded Board eXpandable specification, as compared with PC/104 modules, these larger SBCs tend to have everything of a full PC on them, including application oriented interfaces like audio, analog, or digital I/O in many cases. Also its much easier to fit Pentium CPUs, whereas its a tight squeeze to do so on a PC/104 SBC, mini PC is a PC small form factor very close in size to an external CD or DVD drive. Mini PCs have proven popular for use as HTPCs, aOpen XC mini Apple Mac mini Intel NUC Gigabyte Brix Zotac ZBOX Asus Vivopc Hard-disk-drive form factors Small form factor The official Intel Form factors website containing form factor descriptions
2.
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
3.
WTX (form factor)
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WTX was a motherboard form factor specification introduced by Intel at the IDF in September 1998, for its use at high-end, multiprocessor, multiple-hard-disks server and workstations. The specification had support from major OEMs and motherboard manufacturers and was updated in February 1999, as of 2008 the specification has been discontinued and the URL www. wtx. org no longer hosts a website and has not been owned by Intel since at least 2004. This form factor was geared specifically towards the needs of high-end systems and this allowed for standard form factor motherboards and chassis to be used to integrate processors with more demanding thermal management requirements. Bigger than ATX, maximum WTX motherboard size was 14 ×16.75 in and this was intended to provide more room in order to accommodate higher numbers of integrated components. WTX computer cases were backwards compatible with ATX motherboards, and sometimes equipped with ATX power supplies. EATX, a version of ATX which has a factor of 304.8 ×330.2 mm. SWTX
4.
AT (form factor)
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In the area of IBM compatible personal computers, the AT form factor referred to the dimensions and layout of the motherboard for the IBM AT. The IBM AT became a widely copied design in the home computer market of the 1980s. IBM clones made at the time began using AT compatible designs, in the 1990s many computers still used AT and its variants. Since 1997, the AT form factor has been supplanted by ATX. The original AT motherboard, later known as Full AT, is 13.8 ×12 inches, the boards size also means that it takes up space behind the drive bays, making installation of new drives more difficult. The power connectors for AT motherboards are two nearly identical 6-pin plugs and sockets, as designed by IBM, the connectors are mechanically keyed so that each can only be inserted in its correct position, but some clone manufacturers cut costs and used unkeyed connectors. Technicians developed mnemonic devices to assure proper installation, including black wires together in the middle and red and red. These motherboards have similar mounting hole positions and the same eight card slot locations as those with the AT form factor, the size 13 ×8.5 in and flexibility of this kind of motherboard were the key to success of this format. The development of bigger CPU coolers—and the fact that they blocked full-length PCI, while the AT standard is now considered to be mostly obsolete, some industrial computers still use it. In 1995, Intel introduced ATX, a factor which gradually replaced older Baby AT motherboards. During the late 1990s, a majority of boards were either Baby AT or ATX. Many motherboard manufacturers favored Baby AT over ATX as many cases and power supplies in the industry were still designed for AT boards. Also, the lack of a slot on ATX motherboards kept it from being used in some servers. After the industry shifted to ATX motherboard configurations, it common to design cases. The connector at the board is two Molex 15-48-0106 connectors and this mates with a Molex 90331. Motherboards of AT and Baby AT Baby AT Power Supply Baby AT Case Full AT Case Full AT Power Supply ATX Power Supply Links AT power supply connectors with pinouts PC Magazine
5.
BTX (form factor)
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BTX is a form factor for motherboards, originally intended to be the replacement for the aging ATX motherboard form factor in late 2004 and early 2005. It was designed to alleviate some of the issues that arose from using newer technologies on motherboards compliant with the circa 1996 ATX specification, the ATX and BTX standards were both proposed by Intel. The first company to implement BTX was Gateway Inc, followed by Dell, apples Mac Pro utilizes some elements of the BTX design system as well but is not BTX-compliant, rather using a proprietary form factor. Thermal design – The BTX layout establishes a straighter path of airflow with fewer obstacles, there is no dedicated CPU fan – instead, a large 12 cm case fan is mounted, drawing its air directly from outside the computer and cooling the CPU through an airduct. Another distinct feature of BTX is the mounting of the motherboard on the left-hand side. This results in the graphics card heatsink or fan facing upwards, pico BTX motherboards measure 8 ×10.5 in. This is smaller than many current micro-sized motherboards, hence the name pico and these motherboards share a common top half with the other sizes in the BTX line, but support only one or two expansion slots, designed for half-height or riser card applications. Other smaller BTX sizes include, micro BTX at 10.4 ×10.5 in, in the first months of production the ATX and BTX motherboards were so similar that moving a BTX motherboard to an ATX case was possible and vice versa. This was possible because the first BTX motherboards were ATX motherboards turned upside down, later the BTX form factor had a big change by turning it into a mirror image of the ATX standard. Since the new design, both standards are incompatible. Basically BTX motherboards are leftside-right compared to ATX and not upside-down as before, BTX power supply units can be exchanged with newer ATX12V units, but not with older ATX power supplies that dont have the extra 4-pin 12V connector, which was introduced with the ATX12V standard. The BTX form factor has not been widely adopted despite its improvements over ATX, as a result, the availability and variety of BTX-compatible components is limited. Another reason was the lack of OEM adopters, initially, only Gateway and Dell offered computers with the new format, later HP and Fujitsu-Siemens also offered some BTX-based computers. Whatever happened to BTX. org, an Intel-sponsored website dedicated to maintaining data and tools regarding the implementation of various form factors
6.
ATX
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ATX is a motherboard configuration specification developed by Intel in 1995 to improve on previous de facto standards like the AT design. It was the first major change in desktop computer enclosure, motherboard and power supply design in years, improving standardization. The specification defines the key dimensions, mounting point, I/O panel, power. ATX is the most common motherboard design, other standards for smaller boards usually keep the basic rear layout but reduce the size of the board and the number of expansion slots. Dimensions of a full-size ATX board are 12 ×9.6 in, the official ATX specifications were released by Intel in 1995 and have been revised numerous times since. The most recent ATX motherboard specification is version 2.2, the most recent ATX12V power supply unit specification is 2.31, released in February 2008. In 2004, Intel announced the BTX standard, intended as a replacement for ATX, as of 2016, the ATX design still remains popular, while BTX has been introduced by some manufacturers. On the back of the case, some major changes were made to the AT standard. Originally AT style cases had only a keyboard connector and expansion slots for add-on card backplates, any other onboard interfaces had to be connected via flying leads to connectors which were mounted either on spaces provided by the case or brackets placed in unused expansion slot positions. Cases are usually fitted with a panel, also known as an I/O plate or I/O shield. If necessary, I/O plates can be replaced to suit a motherboard that is being fitted, the computer will operate correctly without a plate fitted, although there will be open gaps in the case and the EMI/RFI screening will be compromised. Panels were made that allowed fitting an AT motherboard in an ATX case, ATX also made the PS/2-style mini-DIN keyboard and mouse connectors ubiquitous. AT systems used a 5-pin DIN connector for the keyboard and were used with serial port mice. Many modern motherboards are phasing out the PS/2-style keyboard and mouse connectors in favor of the more modern Universal Serial Bus, other legacy connectors that are slowly being phased out of modern ATX motherboards include 25-pin parallel ports and 9-pin RS-232 serial ports. In their place are onboard peripheral ports such as Ethernet, FireWire, eSATA, audio ports, video, standard ATX provides seven slots at 0.8 in spacing, the popular Micro-ATX size removes 2.4 inches and three slots, leaving four. Here width refers to the distance along the external connector edge, note each larger size inherits all previous colors area. Note, AOpen has conflated the term Mini ATX with a more recent 15 ×15 cm design, a number of manufacturers have added one, two or three additional expansion slots to the standard 12-inch ATX motherboard width. Server System Infrastructure Forums Compact Electronics Bay measures 12 ×10.5 in
7.
MicroATX
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MicroATX is a standard for motherboards that was introduced in December 1997. The maximum size of a motherboard is 9.6 ×9.6 in. The standard ATX size is 25% longer, at 12 ×9.6 in, currently available microATX motherboards support CPUs from VIA, Intel or AMD. microATX was explicitly designed to be backward-compatible with ATX. The mounting points of microATX motherboards are a subset of those used on full-size ATX boards, thus, microATX motherboards can be used in full-size ATX cases. Furthermore, most microATX motherboards generally use the same connectors as ATX motherboards. MicroATX boards often use the same chipsets as full-size ATX boards, however, since microATX cases are typically much smaller than ATX cases, they usually have fewer expansion slots. Most modern ATX motherboards have a maximum of seven PCI or PCI-Express expansion slots, in recent years, however, it is common even for ATX boards to integrate all these components, as much of this functionality is contained in the typical northbridge/southbridge pair. With the must-have functions already present on the motherboard, the need for having many expansion slots has faded, since 2006, dual-GPU configurations became possible on microATX motherboards for high-end enthusiast gaming setups, further reducing the need for full ATX motherboards. In addition, some cases require the use of low-profile PCI cards. Compared to Mini-ITX, microATX motherboards have a maximum of four slots and four DIMM slots, as opposed to the single expansion slot. This means that microATX allows dual-graphics card and quad-channel memory configurations
8.
FlexATX
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FlexATX is a motherboard form factor derived from ATX. The specification was released in 1999 by Intel as an addendum to the microATX specification and it uses a subset of the motherboard mounting holes required for microATX and the same I/O plate system as ATX and microATX. FlexATX specifies that a motherboard be no larger than 9 ×7.5 in, and can have no more than three expansion slots
9.
Mini-ITX
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Mini-ITX is a 17 ×17 cm motherboard, developed by VIA Technologies in 2001. They are commonly used in small-configured computer systems, the four mounting holes in a Mini-ITX board line up with four of the holes in ATX-specification motherboards, and the locations of the backplate and expansion slot are the same. Mini-ITX boards can therefore often be used in cases designed for ATX, micro-ATX, the design has provision for one expansion slot. Earlier motherboards conventionally have a standard 33 MHz 5V 32-bit PCI slot, many older case designs use riser cards and some even have two-slot riser cards, although the two-slot riser cards are not compatible with all boards. Designed by Robert Kuo, VIAs chief R&D expert, the 215×191 mm VT6009 ITX Reference Board was demonstrated in Information PC and he would later go on to design the Mini-ITX design. At that point, few took up the ITX design. Other manufactures instead produced smaller boards based on the very similar 229×191 mm FlexATX configuration, in October 2001, VIA announced their decision to create a new motherboard division, to provide standardized infrastructure for lower-cost PC iterations, and focus on embedded devices. The result was the November 2001 release of the VT6010 Mini-ITX reference design, once touted as an Information PC. Manufacturers were still reluctant, but customer response was more receptive, so VIA decided to manufacture. In April 2002 the first Mini-ITX motherboards—VIAs EPIA5000 and EPIA800 —were sold to industrial customers, Mini-ITX boards primarily appeal to the industrial and embedded PC markets, with the majority sold as bulk components or integrated into a finished system for single-purpose computing applications. They are produced with a much longer sales life-cycle than consumer boards, manufacturers can prototype using standard cases and power supplies, then build their own enclosures if volumes get high enough. Typical applications include playing music in supermarkets, powering self-service kiosks, VIA has continued to expand its Mini-ITX motherboard line. Some of the earlier generations included the original PL133 chipset boards, CLE266 chipset boards, second generation boards featured the EPIA M, MII, CL, PD, TC and MS — all tailored to slightly different markets. Legacy VIA boards use their x86-compatible CPUs — the C3, C7 or low-power Eden variants, with newer boards featuring the VIA Nano CPU and this new wave of offerings has caused Mini-ITX to explode in popularity among home users, hobbyists and even overclockers. Intel is currently one of few manufacturers of Mini-ITX mainboards that also include the mechanical dimensions in their manuals. A number of manufacturers have released Intel Mini-ITX motherboards that feature onboard CPUs and these Intel processors are designed to draw minimal power resulting in lower TDP ideal for fanless configurations and embedded applications. Starting from LGA775, socketed Intel Mini-ITX motherboards have been released by Intel and this was followed by LGA1156 motherboards Starting from LGA1155, Mini-ITX motherboards have started to become mainstream, with many different manufacturers releasing products. This trend has continued with LGA1150 CPUs, despite this, manufacturers have released LGA2011 based Mini-ITX motherboards
10.
Mini ATX
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Mini ATX or Mini-ATX is a name used for various motherboard form factors, mainly a 15 ×15 cm size developed by AOpen Inc. This Mini-ATX definition is slightly smaller than Mini-ITX, there is no single widely accepted form factor by this name. Another definition of Mini-ATX is Intels 11.2 ×8.2 in and this was at one time specified within the ATX specification but was later removed after the adoption of microATX. The smaller form factor Nano-ITX motherboard lacks a CPU socket module which limits its flexibility for different applications, due to a mobile CPU having lower power requirements, there is less heat generated by the CPU and internal components, and the thermal design is simplified. With its passive cooling design, it is typically noiseless and the manufacturing costs, Mini-ATX motherboards use surface-mount technology, solid state capacitors and 8 layers PCB design to maximize reliability. The DC-to-DC converter solution design removes the power unit from a Mini-ATX case. This reduces the size and an external power supply unit brings more flexibility when deploying system
11.
Nano-ITX
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Nano-ITX is a computer motherboard form factor first proposed by VIA Technologies at CeBIT in March 2003, and implemented in late 2005. There are four Nano-ITX motherboard product lines so far, VIAs EPIA N, EPIA NL, EPIA NX, and these boards are available from a wide variety of manufacturers supporting numerous different CPU platforms. Mini-ITX Pico-ITX Mobile-ITX EPIA, mini-ITX and nano-ITX motherboards from VIA Ultra-Mobile PC Minimig, is an open source re-implementation of an Amiga 500 in Nano-ITX format Jetway Computer Corp, j8F9 AMD Nano-ITX Mainboards Nano ITX Manufacturer, Mainboard OEMs, Daughterboards etc. VIA EPIA N-Series Nano-ITX Mainboard VIA EPIA NL-Series Nano-ITX Mainboard VIA EPIA NX-Series Nano-ITX Mainboard VIA EPIA NR-Series Nano-ITX Mainboard
12.
Next Unit of Computing
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Next Unit of Computing is a small-form-factor personal computer designed by Intel. Its first generation is based on the Sandy Bridge Celeron CPU and its second-generation central processing unit is based on the Ivy Bridge Core i3 and Core i5 processors. Its third generation is based on the Haswell architecture and its motherboard measures 4 ×4 inches. The barebone kits consist of the board, in a case with a fan. These tables show some of the key differences between the models of the Intel NUC and this UCFF motherboard and system kit are codenamed Ski Lake and Deep Canyon respectively. The base UCFF motherboard and kit without Thunderbolt or USB3 are codenamed Golden Lake, the Thunderbolt capable UCFF motherboard and kit are codenamed Campers Lake and Box Canyon respectively. The USB3 capable UCFF motherboard and kit are codenamed Rend Lake, the stripped-down DC3217BY model has a signature red top cover and no Ethernet. This model, while stocks were available, generally sold for a deep discount. The absence of Ethernet may be mitigated by using a USB2, the DC3217BY runs MacOS X flawlessly as the processors HD4000 is fully supported by MacOS X. Of the two ports, Thunderbolt/Display Port and HDMI, mDP is the most dependable for MacOS X. Sound is not provided by the chassis, but may be provided by a generic USB dongle, C-Media. The DN2820FYKH product itself is mis-marked DN2820FYK, but the package, all retail documentation. The H indicates support for internal 2.5 media, SSD or HD, there is no non-H version of this product as it does not include an on-board mSATA connector, hence media which is external to the board is mandatory, and hence the H version. This product introduces for the first time a new 12 volt,3 ampere wall wart, in place of the traditional 19 volt,3.42 ampere power brick, four region-specific plug-on adapters, including North America and three overseas countries, are included in the retail package. These models shipped with the problematic BIOS revision 13, however this revision did not recognise most low voltage SO-DIMMs, keyboard escapes for BIOS interfacing had been problematic, legacy booting was not supported, and it had been elected to only include UEFI booting. BIOS revision 48 has been released and resolved the problems, enabling the recognition of most low voltage SO-DIMMs, keyboard escapes and this UCFF motherboard and system kit models based on Thin Canyon. UCFF motherboard and system kit models based on Wilson Canyon containing Haswell processors were revealed in June 2013, in early 2015 a new generation of NUCs, powered by 5th generation Intel processors was released and in Q22015 the first NUC with Core i7 processor will become available. The currently available collection of 5th generation of NUCs include adaptive/smart performance technology, UCFF motherboard and system kit models are based on the Rock Canyon architecture
13.
Pico-ITX
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Pico-ITX is a PC motherboard form factor announced by VIA Technologies in January 2007 and demonstrated later the same year at CeBIT. The formfactor was transferred over to SFF-SIG in 2008, the Pico-ITX form factor specifications call for the board to be 10 ×7.2 cm, which is half the area of Nano-ITX. The processor can be a VIA C7, a VIA Eden V4 and it uses DDR2 400/533 SO-DIMM memory, with support for up to 1GB. Video is supplied via AGP by VIAs UniChrome Pro II GPU with built-in MPEG-2,4, the BIOS is a 4 or 8 Mbit Award BIOS. The first motherboard produced in form factor is called EPIA PX10000G. It is 10 ×7.2 cm and 10 layers deep, the operating temperature range is from 0°C to about 50°C. The operating humidity level can be from 0% to about 95% and it uses a 1 GHz VIA C7-M processor, a VIA VX700 chip set, and is RoHS compliant. It has onboard VGA video, VIA VT6106S 10/100 8P8C Ethernet, UDMA 33/66/100/133 44-pin PATA, and SATA I/O. DVI and LVDS video-out, USB2.0, COM, PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard and it has been demonstrated running Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista. Modern versions of major Linux distributions, including Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu 7.10 and it is available as a single board, as well as part of a barebones package, the Artigo, a small form factor complete computer. This model is similar to the PX10000G, but uses the 500 MHz VIA Eden ULV CPU, there are two versions of this model, the PX5000G, which has a fan-assisted heatsink, and the PX5000EG, which has a fanless heatsink. The VIA PX-O daughtercard supplies access to,1 RCA-out for S/PDIF usage 4 USB2.0 ports 13. 5mm Mic-in,13. 5mm line-out,13. 5mm line-in 1 buzzer/speaker 1 CN9 connector 1 CN10 connector. The VIA VT1625M daughtercard supplies access to,1 external TV-out 1 video capture port, the Serener PXFPIO is 109mm × 22mm in size and connects via a 120mm ribbon cable through a daughter card. This addon may require modification to the due to the size of the daughter card. The EPIA-P700-05LE has a 500 MHz VIA Eden ULV CPU and has a passive heatsink, the P700 comes retail with the P700-A & P700-B daughter cards. Some have the CPU and the chipset directly on the Pico-ITX board, other boards, like the Toradex Daisy, allow the addition of Nano COM Express modules. Pico-ITX boards are available with ARM architecture. In this field DH electronics uses the standardized DHCOM Computer On Modules with several ARM based modules, another notable addition is the expansion from 10 to 12 layers thickness
14.
PC/104
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PC/104 is a family of embedded computer standards which define both form factors and computer buses. PC/104 is intended for specialized environments where a small, rugged computer system is required, the standard is modular, and allows consumers to stack together boards from a variety of COTS manufacturers to produce a customized embedded system. The original PC/104 form factor is somewhat smaller than a desktop PC motherboard at 3.550 ×3.775 inches. Unlike other popular computer form factors such as ATX, which rely on a motherboard or backplane, the PC/104 specification defines four mounting holes at the corners of each module, which allow the boards to be fastened to each other using standoffs. The stackable bus connectors and use of standoffs provides a more rugged mounting than slot boards found in desktop PCs, the compact board size further contributes to the ruggedness of the form factor by reducing the possibility of PCB flexing under shock and vibration. A typical PC/104 system will include a CPU board, power supply board, a wide array of peripheral boards are available from various vendors. Users may design a stack that incorporates boards from multiple vendors, the overall height, weight, and power consumption of the stack can vary depending on the number of boards that are used. PC/104 is sometimes referred to as a stackable PC, as most of the architecture derives from the desktop PC, the majority of PC/104 CPU boards are x86 compatible and include standard PC interfaces such as Serial Ports, USB, Ethernet, and VGA. A x86 PC/104 system is capable of standard PC operating system such as DOS, Windows. However, it is quite common to use a real-time operating system. The PC/104 bus and form factor was originally devised by Ampro in 1987, an IEEE standard corresponding to PC/104 was drafted as IEEE P996.1, but never ratified. In 1997, the PC/104 Consortium introduced a standard based on the PCI bus. A PCI Express-based standard was introduced in 2008, pC/104-related specifications are controlled by the PC/104 Consortium. There are currently 47 members of the Consortium, all specifications published by the Consortium are freely available. Membership in the Consortium is not required to design and manufacture a PC/104 board, the specifications released by the PC/104 Consortium define multiple of Bus Structures and Form Factors. Bus Structure defines the location and pinout of the bus connector, Form Factor refers to size and shape of the board. It is possible to one of the PC/104 stackable expansion buses on a number of different form factors. Note the term PC/104 is often used interchangeably to refer to either the Bus Structure or Form Factor and this can be a source of confusion
15.
Mobile-ITX
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Mobile-ITX is the smallest x86 compliant motherboard form factor presented by VIA Technologies in December,2009. The motherboard size is 60 ×60 mm, there are no computer ports on the CPU module and it is necessary to use an I/O carrier board. The design is intended for medical, transportation and military embedded markets, the Mobile-ITX form factor was announced by VIA Technologies at Computex in June,2007. The motherboard size of first prototypes was 75 ×45 mm, the design was intended for ultra-mobile computing such as a smartphone or UMPC. At the announcement, an ultra-mobile PC reference design was shown running Windows XP Embedded
16.
CoreExpress
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CoreExpress modules are complete computer-on-module highly integrated, compact computers that can be used in an embedded computer board design, much like an integrated circuit component. COMs integrate CPU, memory, graphics, and BIOS, the interfaces are legacy-free, using only digital buses such as PCI Express, Serial ATA, Ethernet, USB, and HD audio. All signals are accessible on a high-density, high-speed, 220-pin connector, although most implementations use Intel processors, the specification is open for different CPU modules. CoreExpress modules are mounted on a carrier board, containing the peripherals required for the specific application. In this way, small but highly specialized computer systems can be built, the CoreExpress form factor was originally developed by LiPPERT Embedded Computers and standardized by the Small Form Factor Special Interest Group in March 2010. The specification defines a board size of 58 mm ×65 mm, slightly smaller than a credit card, the module can be embedded into a heat spreader, which distributes the component-generated heat onto a larger surface area. In low power applications, this distribution may be enough for thermal dissipation. In higher power applications, the heat spreader presents an interface for mating to additional heat dissipating components such as finned heat sinks. Heat spreaders are simpler and more rugged to connect to than the heat generating components underneath and this simplifies mechanical design for the system builder, but can be less efficient than a complete purpose-built thermal solution. In a complete system, heat spreaders can be part of the electromagnetic Interference containment design, the specification is hosted by the Small Form Factors Special Interest Group and is available on their website. Revision 2.1 was released on February 23,2010, Embedded System Module Computer-on-module Computer form factor Embedded system CoreExpress website LiPPERT Embedded Computers CoreExpress-ECO module
17.
IBM compatible
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IBM PC compatible computers are those similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, able to run the same software and support the same expansion cards as those. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones, Columbia Data Products built the first clone of the IBM personal computer by a clean room implementation of its BIOS. Early IBM PC compatibles used the computer bus as the original PC. The IBM AT compatible bus was named the Industry Standard Architecture bus by manufacturers of compatible computers. The term IBM PC compatible is now a historical description only, only the Apple Macintosh classic Mac OS and macOS kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, so consumers are typically identified as being a PC or Mac user. IBM decided in 1980 to market a low-cost single-user computer as quickly as possible in response to Apple Computers success in the microcomputer market. On 12 August 1981, the first IBM PC went on sale, there were three operating systems available for it. The least expensive and most popular was PC DOS made by Microsoft, in a crucial concession, IBMs agreement allowed Microsoft to sell its own version, MS-DOS, for non-IBM computers. The only component of the original PC architecture exclusive to IBM was the BIOS and this software would run on any machine using MS-DOS or PC-DOS. Software that directly addressed the hardware instead of making standard calls was faster, however, software addressing IBM PC hardware in this way would not run on MS-DOS machines with different hardware. The 808x computer marketplace rapidly excluded all machines which were not hardware-, the 640 KB barrier on conventional system memory available to MS-DOS is a legacy of that period, other non-clone machines, while subject to a limit, could exceed 640 kB. Rumors of lookalike, compatible computers, created without IBMs approval, by June 1983 PC Magazine defined PC clone as a computer accommodate the user who takes a disk home from an IBM PC, walks across the room, and plugs it into the foreign machine. Because of a shortage of IBM PCs that year, many customers purchased clones instead, Columbia Data Products produced the first computer more or less compatible to the IBM PC standard during June 1982, soon followed by Eagle Computer. Compaq announced its first IBM PC compatible in November 1982, the Compaq Portable, the Compaq was the first sewing machine-sized portable computer that was essentially 100% PC-compatible. The company could not copy the BIOS directly as a result of the decision in Apple v. Franklin. Each computer would have its own Original Equipment Manufacturer version of MS-DOS, any software written for MS-DOS would operate on any MS-DOS computer, despite variations in hardware design. This expectation seemed reasonable in the marketplace of the time. Until then Microsoft was based primarily on computer languages such as BASIC, the established small system operating software was CP/M from Digital Research which was in use both at the hobbyist level and by the more professional of those using microcomputers
18.
Personal computer
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A personal computer is a multi-purpose electronic computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. PCs are intended to be operated directly by a end-user, rather than by an expert or technician. In the 2010s, PCs are typically connected to the Internet, allowing access to the World Wide Web, personal computers may be connected to a local area network, either by a cable or a wireless connection. In the 2010s, a PC may be, a multi-component desktop computer, designed for use in a location a laptop computer, designed for easy portability or a tablet computer. In the 2010s, PCs run using a system, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux. The very earliest microcomputers, equipped with a front panel, required hand-loading of a program to load programs from external storage. Before long, automatic booting from permanent read-only memory became universal, in the 2010s, users have access to a wide range of commercial software, free software and free and open-source software, which are provided in ready-to-run or ready-to-compile form. Since the early 1990s, Microsoft operating systems and Intel hardware have dominated much of the computer market, first with MS-DOS. Alternatives to Microsofts Windows operating systems occupy a minority share of the industry and these include Apples OS X and free open-source Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and Berkeley Software Distribution. Advanced Micro Devices provides the alternative to Intels processors. PC is an initialism for personal computer, some PCs, including the OLPC XOs, are equipped with x86 or x64 processors but not designed to run Microsoft Windows. PC is used in contrast with Mac, an Apple Macintosh computer and this sense of the word is used in the Get a Mac advertisement campaign that ran between 2006 and 2009, as well as its rival, Im a PC campaign, that appeared in 2008. Since Apples transition to Intel processors starting 2005, all Macintosh computers are now PCs, the “brain” may one day come down to our level and help with our income-tax and book-keeping calculations. But this is speculation and there is no sign of it so far, in the history of computing there were many examples of computers designed to be used by one person, as opposed to terminals connected to mainframe computers. Using the narrow definition of operated by one person, the first personal computer was the ENIAC which became operational in 1946 and it did not meet further definitions of affordable or easy to use. An example of an early single-user computer was the LGP-30, created in 1956 by Stan Frankel and used for science and it came with a retail price of $47, 000—equivalent to about $414,000 today. Introduced at the 1965 New York Worlds Fair, the Programma 101 was a programmable calculator described in advertisements as a desktop computer. It was manufactured by the Italian company Olivetti and invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, the Soviet MIR series of computers was developed from 1965 to 1969 in a group headed by Victor Glushkov
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Motherboard
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A motherboard is the main printed circuit board found in general purpose microcomputers and other expandable systems. It holds and allows communication between many of the electronic components of a system, such as the central processing unit and memory. In very old designs, copper wires were the discrete connections between card connector pins, but printed circuit boards soon became the standard practice, the Central Processing Unit, memory, and peripherals were housed on individual printed circuit boards, which were plugged into the backplate. The ubiquitous S-100 bus of the 1970s is an example of type of backplane system. During the late 1980s and 1990s, it became economical to move a number of peripheral functions onto the motherboard. Business PCs, workstations, and servers were more likely to need expansion cards, either for more robust functions, or for higher speeds, laptop and notebook computers that were developed in the 1990s integrated the most common peripherals. This even included motherboards with no upgradeable components, a trend that would continue as smaller systems were introduced after the turn of the century, memory, processors, network controllers, power source, and storage would be integrated into some systems. A motherboard provides the connections by which the other components of the system communicate. Unlike a backplane, it contains the central processing unit and hosts other subsystems. A typical desktop computer has its microprocessor, main memory, an important component of a motherboard is the microprocessors supporting chipset, which provides the supporting interfaces between the CPU and the various buses and external components. This chipset determines, to an extent, the features and capabilities of the motherboard, modern motherboards include, Sockets in which one or more microprocessors may be installed. In the case of CPUs in ball grid array packages, such as the VIA C3, as of 2007, some graphics cards require more power than the motherboard can provide, and thus dedicated connectors have been introduced to attach them directly to the power supply. Connectors for hard drives, typically SATA only, disk drives also connect to the power supply. Additionally, nearly all motherboards include logic and connectors to support commonly used devices, such as USB for mouse devices. Early personal computers such as the Apple II or IBM PC included only this minimal peripheral support on the motherboard, occasionally video interface hardware was also integrated into the motherboard, for example, on the Apple II and rarely on IBM-compatible computers such as the IBM PC Jr. Additional peripherals such as disk controllers and serial ports were provided as expansion cards, given the high thermal design power of high-speed computer CPUs and components, modern motherboards nearly always include heat sinks and mounting points for fans to dissipate excess heat. Motherboards are produced in a variety of sizes and shapes called computer form factor, however, the motherboards used in IBM-compatible systems are designed to fit various case sizes. As of 2007, most desktop computer motherboards use the ATX standard form factor — even those found in Macintosh and Sun computers, a cases motherboard and PSU form factor must all match, though some smaller form factor motherboards of the same family will fit larger cases
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IBM Personal Computer
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The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12,1981 and it was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida. IBM compatible became an important criterion for sales growth, only the Apple Macintosh family kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, International Business Machines, one of the worlds largest companies, had a 62% share of the mainframe computer market in 1981. Its share of the computer market, however, had declined from 60% in 1970 to 32% in 1980. In 1979 BusinessWeek asked, Is IBM just another stodgy, mature company, by 1981 its stock price had declined by 22%. IBMs earnings for the first half the year grew by 5. 3%—one third of the inflation rate—while those of minicomputer maker Digital Equipment Corporation grew by more than 35%. B. M, No longer dominates the computer business. IBM wished to avoid the outcome with the new personal computer industry, dominated by the Commodore PET, Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, Tandy Corporations TRS-80. With $150 million in sales by 1979 and projected growth of more than 40% in the early 1980s. The Japanese project, codenamed Go, ended before the 1981 release of the American-designed IBM PC codenamed Chess, whether IBM had waited too long to enter an industry in which Apple and others were already successful was unclear. An observer stated that IBM bringing out a computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance. Successful microcomputer company Vector Graphics fiscal 1980 revenue was $12 million, the company only sold through its internal sales force, had no experience with resellers or retail stores, and did not introduce the first product designed to work with non-IBM equipment until 1980. Another observer claimed that IBM made decisions so slowly that, when tested, as with other large computer companies, its new products typically required about four to five years for development. IBM had to learn how to develop, mass-produce. The potential importance to microcomputers of a company so prestigious, that a saying in American companies stated No one ever got fired for buying IBM, was nonetheless clear. InfoWorld, which described itself as The Newsweekly for Microcomputer Users, stated that for my grandmother, is far and away the media star, not because of its features, but because it exists at all. When the number eight company in the Fortune 500 enters the field, the influence of a personal computer made by a company whose name has literally come to mean computer to most of the world is hard to contemplate. The editorial acknowledged that some factions in our industry have looked upon IBM as the enemy, desktop sized programmable calculators by Hewlett Packard had evolved into the HP9830 BASIC language computer by 1972. In 1972–1973 a team led by Dr. SCAMP emulated an IBM1130 minicomputer to run APL\1130, in 1973 APL was generally available only on mainframe computers, and most desktop sized microcomputers such as the Wang 2200 or HP9800 offered only BASIC
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IBM Personal Computer XT
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The IBM Personal Computer XT, often shortened to the IBM XT, PC XT, or simply XT, is a version of the IBM PC with a built-in hard drive. It was released as IBM Machine Type number 5160 on March 8,1983, apart from the hard drive, it was essentially the same as the original PC, with only minor improvements. The XT was mainly intended as an enhanced IBM PC for business users, later floppy-only models would effectively replace the original model 5150 PC. A corresponding 3270 PC featuring 3270 terminal emulation was released later in October 1983, the motherboard had an Intel 8088 microprocessor running at 4.77 MHz, with a socket for an optional 8087 math coprocessor. IBM recognized soon after the IBM PCs release in 1981 that its five 8-bit I/O channel expansion slots were insufficient. An internal IBM publication stated in October 1981 about the number that In my opinion, it could be a problem, a BYTE Magazine article commented that DOS2.0 is more revolutionary and advanced than the computer itself. Unlike many hard disk systems on microcomputers at the time, the XT was able to boot directly off the drive, aside from the hard disk, a serial port card was also standard equipment on the XT, all other cards being optional. By the end of 1983, the XT was neck-and-neck with the original PC for sales, two were behind the floppy drive and shorter than PCs slots. The other six fit into the space as the PCs five slots. Most PC cards would not fit into the two slots, and some would not fit into the six standard-length, but narrower, slots. The floppy and hard drive adapters, the serial port card, the basic specification was soon upgraded to have 256 KB of RAM as standard. Expansion slots could be used for I/O devices or for memory expansion, available Video cards were initially the Monochrome Display Adapter and Color Graphics Adapter, with Enhanced Graphics Adapter and Professional Graphics Controller becoming available in 1984. The XT had a case similar to that of the IBM PC. It weighed 32 pounds and was approximately 19.5 inches wide by 16 inches deep by 5.5 inches high, the power supply of the original XT sold in the US was configured for 120 V AC only and could not be used with 240 V mains supplies. XTs with 240V-compatible power supplies were sold in international markets. Both were rated at 130 Watts, the operating system usually sold with the XT was PC DOS2.0 or, by the time the XT was discontinued in early 1987, DOS3.2. Like the original PC, the XT came with IBM BASIC in its ROM, the XT BIOS also displayed a memory count during the POST, unlike the PC. The XT was discontinued in the spring of 1987, replaced by the PS/2 Model 30, XT motherboards came in two different versions
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IBM PC compatible
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IBM PC compatible computers are those similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, able to run the same software and support the same expansion cards as those. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones, Columbia Data Products built the first clone of the IBM personal computer by a clean room implementation of its BIOS. Early IBM PC compatibles used the computer bus as the original PC. The IBM AT compatible bus was named the Industry Standard Architecture bus by manufacturers of compatible computers. The term IBM PC compatible is now a historical description only, only the Apple Macintosh classic Mac OS and macOS kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, so consumers are typically identified as being a PC or Mac user. IBM decided in 1980 to market a low-cost single-user computer as quickly as possible in response to Apple Computers success in the microcomputer market. On 12 August 1981, the first IBM PC went on sale, there were three operating systems available for it. The least expensive and most popular was PC DOS made by Microsoft, in a crucial concession, IBMs agreement allowed Microsoft to sell its own version, MS-DOS, for non-IBM computers. The only component of the original PC architecture exclusive to IBM was the BIOS and this software would run on any machine using MS-DOS or PC-DOS. Software that directly addressed the hardware instead of making standard calls was faster, however, software addressing IBM PC hardware in this way would not run on MS-DOS machines with different hardware. The 808x computer marketplace rapidly excluded all machines which were not hardware-, the 640 KB barrier on conventional system memory available to MS-DOS is a legacy of that period, other non-clone machines, while subject to a limit, could exceed 640 kB. Rumors of lookalike, compatible computers, created without IBMs approval, by June 1983 PC Magazine defined PC clone as a computer accommodate the user who takes a disk home from an IBM PC, walks across the room, and plugs it into the foreign machine. Because of a shortage of IBM PCs that year, many customers purchased clones instead, Columbia Data Products produced the first computer more or less compatible to the IBM PC standard during June 1982, soon followed by Eagle Computer. Compaq announced its first IBM PC compatible in November 1982, the Compaq Portable, the Compaq was the first sewing machine-sized portable computer that was essentially 100% PC-compatible. The company could not copy the BIOS directly as a result of the decision in Apple v. Franklin. Each computer would have its own Original Equipment Manufacturer version of MS-DOS, any software written for MS-DOS would operate on any MS-DOS computer, despite variations in hardware design. This expectation seemed reasonable in the marketplace of the time. Until then Microsoft was based primarily on computer languages such as BASIC, the established small system operating software was CP/M from Digital Research which was in use both at the hobbyist level and by the more professional of those using microcomputers
23.
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
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Drive bay
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A drive bay is a standard-sized area for adding hardware to a computer. Most drive bays are fixed to the inside of a case, over the years since the introduction of the IBM PC, it and its compatibles have had many form factors of drive bays. Four form factors are in use today, the 5.25,3.5,2.5 or 1.8 drive bays. These names do not refer to the width of the bay itself,8. 0″ drive bays were found in early IBM computers, CP/M computers, and the TRS-80 Model II. They were 4. 624″ high by 9. 5″ wide, full-height bays were found in old PCs in the early to mid-1980s. They were 3. 25″ high by 5. 75″ wide and this is the size of the internal part of the bay, as the front side is actually 5. 875″. The difference between those widths and the name of the bay size is because it is named after the size of floppy that would fit in those drives, as the name indicates, two half-height devices can fit in one full-height bay. Often represented as 5. 25-inch, these floppy disk drives are obsolete, dimensions of 5.25 optical drives are specified in the SFF standard SFF-8551. 3. 5″ bays, like their counterparts, are named after diskette dimensions. Those with an opening in the front of the case are generally used for floppy or Zip drives, hard drives in modern computers are typically mounted in fully internal 4″ bays. Most modern computers do not come with a floppy drive at all. There are adapters, sometimes called a sled, which can be used to mount a 3. 5″ device in a 5. 25″ bay. More recently, it is becoming common to use 3. 5″ bays for smart card and memory card readers, the dimensions of a 3. 5″ drive are specified in the SFF standard specifications SFF-8300 and SFF-8301 which were incorporated into the EIA-740 specification by the Electronic Industries Association. For 2. 5″ bays, actual dimensions are 2. 75″ wide by 0.197 to 0. 750″ high and 3.955 deep, however most laptops have drive bays smaller than the 15 mm specification. 2.5 hard drives may range from 7 mm to 15 mm in height,9.51 mm size drives are predominantly used by laptop manufacturers, however at present 2.5 Velociraptor and some higher capacity drives, are 15 mm in height. The greater height of the 15 mm drives allow more platters, many laptop drive bays are designed to be removable trays in which the drives are mounted, to ease removal and replacement. The dimensions of a 2. 5″ drive are specified in the SFF standard specifications SFF-8200,1. 8″ bays have two specifications, a 60 mm ×70 mm form factor, and a 54 mm ×78 mm form factor. The actual dimensions of the 60 mm ×70 mm are 2. 75″ wide by 0. 276–0. 374″ high and 2.362 deep
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Mnemonic
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A mnemonic device, or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention in the human memory. Mnemonics make use of encoding, retrieval cues, and imagery as specific tools to encode any given information in a way that allows for efficient storage. Mnemonics aid original information in becoming associated with something more meaningful—which, in turn, the word mnemonic is derived from the Ancient Greek word μνημονικός, meaning of memory, or relating to memory and is related to Mnemosyne, the name of the goddess of memory in Greek mythology. Both of these words are derived from μνήμη, remembrance, memory, mnemonics in antiquity were most often considered in the context of what is today known as the art of memory. Ancient Greeks and Romans distinguished between two types of memory, the memory and the artificial memory. The former is inborn, and is the one that everyone uses instinctively, the latter in contrast has to be trained and developed through the learning and practice of a variety of mnemonic techniques. Mnemonic systems are techniques or strategies consciously used to improve memory and they help use information already stored in long-term memory to make memorisation an easier task. Mnemonic devices were much cultivated by Greek sophists and philosophers and are referred to by Plato. In later times the poet Simonides was credited for development of these techniques, the Romans valued such helps in order to support facility in public speaking. The Greek and the Roman system of mnemonics was founded on the use of mental places and signs or pictures, to recall these, an individual had only to search over the apartments of the house until discovering the places where images had been placed by the imagination. Except that the rules of mnemonics are referred to by Martianus Capella, among the voluminous writings of Roger Bacon is a tractate De arte memorativa. Ramon Llull devoted special attention to mnemonics in connection with his ars generalis, about the end of the 15th century, Petrus de Ravenna provoked such astonishment in Italy by his mnemonic feats that he was believed by many to be a necromancer. His Phoenix artis memoriae went through as many as nine editions, about the end of the 16th century, Lambert Schenkel, who taught mnemonics in France, Italy and Germany, similarly surprised people with his memory. He was denounced as a sorcerer by the University of Louvain, the most complete account of his system is given in two works by his pupil Martin Sommer, published in Venice in 1619. In 1618 John Willis published Mnemonica, sive ars reminiscendi, containing a statement of the principles of topical or local mnemonics. Giordano Bruno included a memoria technica in his treatise De umbris idearum, other writers of this period are the Florentine Publicius, Johannes Romberch, Hieronimo Morafiot, Ars memoriae, and B. The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz adopted a very similar to that of Wennsshein for his scheme of a form of writing common to all languages. Wennssheins method was adopted with slight changes afterward by the majority of subsequent original systems and it was modified and supplemented by Richard Grey, a priest who published a Memoria technica in 1730
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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
27.
P5 (microarchitecture)
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The first Pentium microprocessor was introduced by Intel on March 22,1993. Dubbed P5, its microarchitecture was the fifth generation for Intel, in 1996, the Pentium with MMX Technology was introduced with the same basic microarchitecture complemented with an MMX instruction set, larger caches, and some other enhancements. Intels Larrabee multicore architecture project uses a processor core derived from a P5 core, augmented by multithreading, 64-bit instructions, Intels low-powered Bonnell microarchitecture employed in early Atom processor cores also uses an in-order dual pipeline similar to P5. The P5 microarchitecture was designed by the same Santa Clara team which designed the 386 and 486, design work started in 1989, the team decided to use a superscalar architecture, with on-chip cache, floating-point, and branch prediction. The preliminary design was first successfully simulated in 1990, followed by the laying-out of the design, by this time, the team had several dozen engineers. The design was taped out, or transferred to silicon, in April 1992, by mid-1992, the P5 team had 200 engineers. John H. Crawford, chief architect of the original 386, co-managed the design of the P5, along with Donald Alpert, dror Avnon managed the design of the FPU. Vinod K. Dham was general manager of the P5 group, the P5 microarchitecture brings several important advancements over the preceding i486 architecture. Performance, Superscalar architecture — The Pentium has two datapaths that allow it to two instructions per clock cycle in many cases. The main pipe can handle any instruction, while the other can handle the most common simple instructions, some RISC proponents had argued that the complicated x86 instruction set would probably never be implemented by a tightly pipelined microarchitecture, much less by a dual pipeline design. The 486 and the Pentium demonstrated that this was indeed possible and feasible, separation of code and data caches lessens the fetch and operand read/write conflicts compared to the 486. To reduce access time and implementation cost, both of them are 2-way associative, instead of the single 4-way cache of the 486. A related enhancement in the Pentium is the ability to read a block from the code cache even when it is split between two cache lines. Some instructions showed an improvement, most notably FMUL, with up to 15 times higher throughput than in the 80486 FPU. The Pentium is also able to execute a FXCH ST instruction in parallel with an ordinary FPU instruction, four-input address-adders enables the Pentium to further reduce the address calculation latency compared to the 80486. The microcode can employ both pipelines to enable auto-repeating instructions such as rep movsw perform one iteration every clock cycle, while the 80486 needed three clocks per iteration, some examples are, CALL, RET, shifts/rotates, etc. Virtualized interrupt to speed up virtual 8086 mode, other features, Enhanced debug features with the introduction of the Processor-based debug port. Enhanced self test features like the L1 cache parity check, new instructions, CPUID, CMPXCHG8B, RDTSC, RDMSR, WRMSR, RSM
28.
Pentium
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Pentium is a brand used for a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel since 1993. The name Pentium is originally derived from the Greek word penta-πεντα, meaning five (a reference to the prior numeric naming convention of Intels 80n86 processors, during development, Intel generally identifies processors with codenames, such as Prescott, Willamette, Coppermine, Katmai, Klamath, or Deschutes. These usually become widely known, even after the processors are given names on launch. The original Pentium branded CPUs were expected to be named 586 or i586, following Intels prior series of 8086,80186,80286,80386, and 80486 microprocessors, the firms first P5-based microprocessor was released as the original Intel Pentium on March 22,1993. Marketing firm Lexicon Branding was hired to coin a name for the new processor, the suffix -ium was chosen as it could connote a fundamental ingredient of a computer, like a chemical element, while the prefix pent- could refer to the fifth generation of x86. Due to its success, the Pentium brand would continue through several generations of high-end processors, in 2006, the name briefly disappeared from Intels technology roadmaps, only to re-emerge in 2007. In 1998, Intel introduced the Celeron brand for low-priced microprocessors, with the 2006 introduction of the Intel Core brand as the companys new flagship line of processors, the Pentium series was to be discontinued. In 2009, the Dual-Core suffix was dropped, and new x86 microprocessors started carrying the plain Pentium name again, in 2014, Intel released the Pentium 20th Anniversary Edition, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Pentium brand. The processors are unlocked and highly overclockable, the original Intel P5 or Pentium and Pentium MMX processors were the superscalar follow-on to the 80486 processor and were marketed from 1993 to 1999. Some versions of these were available as Pentium OverDrive that would fit into older CPU sockets, in parallel with the P5 microarchitecture, Intel developed the P6 microarchitecture and started marketing it as the Pentium Pro for the high-end market in 1995. It introduced out-of-order execution and a second level cache on dual-chip processor package. The second P6 generation replaced the original P5 with the Pentium II and it was followed by a third version named the Pentium III and Pentium III Xeon, respectively. The Pentium II line added the MMX instructions that were present in the Pentium MMX. Versions of these processors for the Laptop market were initially named Mobile Pentium II and Mobile Pentium III, later versions were named Pentium III-M. Starting with the Pentium II, the Celeron brand was used for versions of most Pentium processors with a reduced feature set such as a smaller cache or missing power management features. In 2000, Intel introduced a new microarchitecture named NetBurst, with a much longer pipeline enabling higher clock frequencies than the P6 based processors, initially, these were named Pentium 4 and the high-end versions have since been named simply Xeon. As with Pentium III, there are both Mobile Pentium 4 and Pentium 4 M processors for the market, with Pentium 4 M denoting the more power-efficient versions. Enthusiast versions of the Pentium 4 with the highest clock rate were named Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, the Pentium D was the first multi-core Pentium, integrating two Pentium 4 chips in one package and was available as the enthusiast Pentium Extreme Edition
29.
Pentium II
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The Pentium II brand refers to Intels sixth-generation microarchitecture and x86-compatible microprocessors introduced on May 7,1997. Containing 7.5 million transistors, the Pentium II featured a version of the first P6-generation core of the Pentium Pro. However, its L2 cache subsystem was a downgrade when compared to Pentium Pros, in early 1999, the Pentium II was superseded by the almost identical Pentium III, which basically only added SSE instructions to the CPU. The Celeron was characterized by a reduced or omitted on-die full-speed L2 cache, the Xeon was characterized by a range of full-speed L2 cache, a 100 MT/s FSB, a different physical interface, and support for symmetric multiprocessing. The Pentium II microprocessor was largely based upon the microarchitecture of its predecessor, the Pentium Pro, unlike previous Pentium and Pentium Pro processors, the Pentium II CPU was packaged in a slot-based module rather than a CPU socket. The processor and associated components were carried on a similar to a typical expansion board within a plastic cartridge. A fixed or removable heatsink was carried on one side, sometimes using its own fan and this larger package was a compromise allowing Intel to separate the secondary cache from the processor while still keeping it on a closely coupled back-side bus. The L2 cache ran at half the processors clock frequency, unlike the Pentium Pro, however, the smallest cache size was increased to 512 KB from the 256 KB on the Pentium Pro. Off-package cache solved the Pentium Pros low yields, allowing Intel to introduce the Pentium II at a price level. Intel improved 16-bit code execution performance on the Pentium II, an area in which the Pentium Pro was at a notable handicap, most consumer software of the day was still using at least some 16-bit code, because of a variety of factors. The Pentium II featured 32 KB of L1 cache, double that of the Pentium Pro, the Pentium II was also the first P6-based CPU to implement the Intel MMX integer SIMD instruction set which had already been introduced on the Pentium MMX. The Pentium II was basically a more consumer-oriented version of the Pentium Pro and it was cheaper to manufacture because of the separate, slower L2 cache memory. The improved 16-bit performance and MMX support made it a choice for consumer-level operating systems, such as Windows 9x. Combined with the larger L1 cache and improved 16-bit performance, the slower and cheaper L2 caches performance impact was reduced, general processor performance was increased while costs were cut. While this limit was practically irrelevant for the home user at the time. Presumably, Intel put this limitation deliberately in place to distinguish the Pentium II from the higher end Pentium Pro line. The 82459AD revision of the chip on some 333 MHz and all 350 MHz and faster Pentium IIs lifted this restriction, the original Klamath Pentium II microprocessor ran at 233,266, and 300 MHz and were produced in a 0.35 µm process. The 300 MHz version, however, only available in quantities later in 1997
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Intel
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Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California that was founded by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce. It is the worlds largest and highest valued semiconductor chip makers based on revenue, and is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, Intel supplies processors for computer system manufacturers such as Apple, Lenovo, HP, and Dell. Intel Corporation was founded on July 18,1968, by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, the companys name was conceived as portmanteau of the words integrated and electronics. The fact that intel is the term for intelligence information made the name appropriate. Intel was a developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips. Although Intel created the worlds first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, during the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs fostering the rapid growth of the computer industry. The Open Source Technology Center at Intel hosts PowerTOP and LatencyTOP, and supports other projects such as Wayland, Intel Array Building Blocks, and Threading Building Blocks. Client Computing Group – 55% of 2016 revenues – produces hardware components used in desktop, data Center Group – 29% of 2016 revenues – produces hardware components used in server, network, and storage platforms. Internet of Things Group – 5% of 2016 revenues – offers platforms designed for retail, transportation, industrial, buildings, non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group – 4% of 2016 revenues – manufactures NAND flash memory products primarily used in solid-state drives. Intel Security Group – 4% of 2016 revenues – produces software, particularly security, programmable Solutions Group – 3% of 2016 revenues – manufactures programmable semiconductors. In 2016, Dell accounted for 15% of Intels total revenues, Lenovo accounted for 13% of total revenues, in the 1980s, Intel was among the top ten sellers of semiconductors in the world. In 1991, Intel became the biggest chip maker by revenue and has held the position ever since, other top semiconductor companies include TSMC, Advanced Micro Devices, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Toshiba and STMicroelectronics. Competitors in PC chip sets include Advanced Micro Devices, VIA Technologies, Silicon Integrated Systems, however, the cross-licensing agreement is canceled in the event of an AMD bankruptcy or takeover. Some smaller competitors such as VIA Technologies produce low-power x86 processors for small factor computers, however, the advent of such mobile computing devices, in particular, smartphones, has in recent years led to a decline in PC sales. Since over 95% of the worlds smartphones currently use processors designed by ARM Holdings, ARM is also planning to make inroads into the PC and server market. Intel has been involved in disputes regarding violation of antitrust laws. Intel was founded in Mountain View, California in 1968 by Gordon E. Moore, a chemist, and Robert Noyce, arthur Rock helped them find investors, while Max Palevsky was on the board from an early stage. Moore and Noyce had left Fairchild Semiconductor to found Intel, Rock was not an employee, but he was an investor and was chairman of the board
