1.
Computer hardware
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Computer hardware is the collection of physical components that constitute a computer system. By contrast, software is instructions that can be stored and run by hardware, hardware is directed by the software to execute any command or instruction. A combination of hardware and software forms a usable computing system, the template for all modern computers is the Von Neumann architecture, detailed in a 1945 paper by Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann. The meaning of the term has evolved to mean a stored-program computer in which an instruction fetch and this is referred to as the Von Neumann bottleneck and often limits the performance of the system. For the third year, U. S. business-to-business channel sales increased. The impressive growth was the fastest sales increase since the end of the recession, sales growth accelerated in the second half of the year peaking in fourth quarter with a 6.9 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2012. There are a number of different types of system in use today. The personal computer, also known as the PC, is one of the most common types of computer due to its versatility, laptops are generally very similar, although they may use lower-power or reduced size components, thus lower performance. The computer case is a plastic or metal enclosure that houses most of the components, a case can be either big or small, but the form factor of motherboard for which it is designed matters more. A power supply unit converts alternating current electric power to low-voltage DC power for the components of the computer. Laptops are capable of running from a battery, normally for a period of hours. The motherboard is the component of a computer. It is usually cooled by a heatsink and fan, or water-cooling system, most newer CPUs include an on-die Graphics Processing Unit. The clock speed of CPUs governs how fast it executes instructions, many modern computers have the option to overclock the CPU which enhances performance at the expense of greater thermal output and thus a need for improved cooling. The chipset, which includes the bridge, mediates communication between the CPU and the other components of the system, including main memory. Random-Access Memory, which stores the code and data that are being accessed by the CPU. For example, when a web browser is opened on the computer it takes up memory, RAM usually comes on DIMMs in the sizes 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB, but can be much larger. Read-Only Memory, which stores the BIOS that runs when the computer is powered on or otherwise begins execution, the BIOS includes boot firmware and power management firmware
2.
Motherboards
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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
3.
Firmware
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In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a type of software that provides control, monitoring and data manipulation of engineered products and systems. Typical examples of devices containing firmware are embedded systems, computers, computer peripherals, mobile phones, the firmware contained in these devices provides the low-level control program for the device. As of 2013, most firmware can be updated, firmware is held in non-volatile memory devices such as ROM, EPROM, or flash memory. Changing the firmware of a device may rarely or never be done during its lifetime, some firmware memory devices are permanently installed, common reasons for updating firmware include fixing bugs or adding features to the device. This may require ROM integrated circuits to be replaced, or flash memory to be reprogrammed through a special procedure. Firmware such as the ROM BIOS of a computer may contain only elementary basic functions of a device. Firmware such as the program of a system may be the only program that will run on the system. Before integrated circuits, other firmware devices included a discrete semiconductor diode matrix, ascher Opler coined the term firmware in a 1967 Datamation article. As originally used, firmware contrasted with hardware and software and it was not composed of CPU machine instructions, but of lower-level microcode involved in the implementation of machine instructions. It existed on the boundary between hardware and software, thus the name firmware, in some respects, the various firmware components are as important as the operating system in a working computer. However, unlike most modern operating systems, firmware rarely has an automatic mechanism of updating itself to fix any functionality issues detected after shipping the unit. The BIOS may be updated by a user, using a small utility program. In contrast, firmware in storage devices rarely gets updated, even when flash storage is used for the firmware, there are no standardized mechanisms for detecting or updating firmware versions, most computer peripherals are themselves special-purpose computers. Devices such as printers, scanners, cameras and USB flash drives have internally stored firmware, some low-cost peripherals no longer contain non-volatile memory for firmware, and instead rely on the host system to transfer the device control program from a disk file or CD. As of 2010 most portable music players support firmware upgrades, some companies use firmware updates to add new playable file formats, iriver added Vorbis playback support this way, for instance. Other features that may change with firmware updates include the GUI or even the battery life, since 1996 most automobiles have employed an on-board computer and various sensors to detect mechanical problems. As of 2010, modern vehicles also employ computer-controlled ABS systems, the driver can also get in-dash information while driving in this manner, such as real-time fuel economy and tire pressure readings. Local dealers can update most vehicle firmware, sometimes, third parties create an unofficial new or modified version of firmware in order to provide new features or to unlock hidden functionality, this is referred to as custom firmware
4.
Computer data storage
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Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media used to retain digital data. It is a function and fundamental component of computers. The central processing unit of a computer is what manipulates data by performing computations, in practice, almost all computers use a storage hierarchy, which puts fast but expensive and small storage options close to the CPU and slower but larger and cheaper options farther away. In the Von Neumann architecture, the CPU consists of two parts, The control unit and the arithmetic logic unit. The former controls the flow of data between the CPU and memory, while the latter performs arithmetic and logical operations on data, without a significant amount of memory, a computer would merely be able to perform fixed operations and immediately output the result. It would have to be reconfigured to change its behavior and this is acceptable for devices such as desk calculators, digital signal processors, and other specialized devices. Von Neumann machines differ in having a memory in which they store their operating instructions, most modern computers are von Neumann machines. A modern digital computer represents data using the numeral system. Text, numbers, pictures, audio, and nearly any form of information can be converted into a string of bits, or binary digits. The most common unit of storage is the byte, equal to 8 bits, a piece of information can be handled by any computer or device whose storage space is large enough to accommodate the binary representation of the piece of information, or simply data. For example, the works of Shakespeare, about 1250 pages in print. Data is encoded by assigning a bit pattern to each character, digit, by adding bits to each encoded unit, redundancy allows the computer to both detect errors in coded data and correct them based on mathematical algorithms. A random bit flip is typically corrected upon detection, the cyclic redundancy check method is typically used in communications and storage for error detection. A detected error is then retried, data compression methods allow in many cases to represent a string of bits by a shorter bit string and reconstruct the original string when needed. This utilizes substantially less storage for many types of data at the cost of more computation, analysis of trade-off between storage cost saving and costs of related computations and possible delays in data availability is done before deciding whether to keep certain data compressed or not. For security reasons certain types of data may be encrypted in storage to prevent the possibility of unauthorized information reconstruction from chunks of storage snapshots. Generally, the lower a storage is in the hierarchy, the lesser its bandwidth and this traditional division of storage to primary, secondary, tertiary and off-line storage is also guided by cost per bit. In contemporary usage, memory is usually semiconductor storage read-write random-access memory, typically DRAM or other forms of fast but temporary storage
5.
Norcross, Georgia
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Norcross is a city in Gwinnett County, Georgia, United States. The population as of the 2010 census was 9,116 and it is included in the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta metropolitan statistical area, which is included in the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Gainesville combined statistical area. Named for former Atlanta Mayor Jonathan Norcross, it was chartered as a town on October 26,1870, the city sits along the Eastern Continental Divide. This divide, or ridge, played a significant role in the settlement of the area. Originally, the Creek and Cherokee people occupied this land, two American forts were established in the early 19th century due to the War of 1812, Fort Daniel and Peachtree Fort. These two forts were connected by this old Indian trail which became known as the original Peachtree Road, by around 1840, this trail had evolved into a stagecoach route connecting South Carolina and Alabama through Georgia. The surrounding area became populated, and the communities of Pinckneyville. This all changed with the creation of the Richmond-Danville Railroad, designed to open up the areas of northeast Georgia. The railroad was proposed in 1856 by Jonathan Norcross and was subsequently approved, construction was delayed, however, until 1866 because of the Civil War. On September 12,1869, the first 20 miles were completed, on October 16,1889, John J. Thrasher bought the 250 acres surrounding the terminal for $1,650, and a town was born – named for Thrashers good friend, Jonathan Norcross. The Brunswick Hotel was built in 1870, and Norcross quickly became known as an area, much like East Lake. The new town also meant the demise of the communities of Pinckneyville and Flint Hill, as people migrated in to build houses, churches, schools. Norcross, Gwinnett Countys second oldest city, saw new roads and highways which were later built by-pass the city, the Norcross Historic District, comprising the center of town, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. As of 2016, the town has had an influx of Hispanic immigration, Norcross is located in western Gwinnett County at 33°56′N 84°13′W. It is bordered to the north by the city of Peachtree Corners, interstate 85 forms the southern boundary of the city, with access from Exits 99,101, and 102. Downtown Atlanta is 20 miles to the southwest via I-85. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city of Norcross has an area of 4.65 square miles, of which 4.64 square miles is land and 0.01 square miles. Gwinnett County Transit serve the city, as of 2010, Norcross had a population of 9,116
6.
Georgia (U.S. state)
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Georgia is a state in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1733, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies, named after King George II of Great Britain, Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2,1788. It declared its secession from the Union on January 19,1861 and it was the last state to be restored to the Union, on July 15,1870. Georgia is the 24th largest and the 8th most populous of the 50 United States, from 2007 to 2008,14 of Georgias counties ranked among the nations 100 fastest-growing, second only to Texas. Georgia is known as the Peach State and the Empire State of the South, Atlanta is the states capital, its most populous city and has been named a global city. Georgia is bordered to the south by Florida, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean and South Carolina, to the west by Alabama, the states northern part is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Appalachian Mountains system. Georgias highest point is Brasstown Bald at 4,784 feet above sea level, Georgia is the largest state entirely east of the Mississippi River in land area. Before settlement by Europeans, Georgia was inhabited by the mound building cultures, the British colony of Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe on February 12,1733. The colony was administered by the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America under a charter issued by King George II. The Trustees implemented a plan for the colonys settlement, known as the Oglethorpe Plan. In 1742 the colony was invaded by the Spanish during the War of Jenkins Ear, in 1752, after the government failed to renew subsidies that had helped support the colony, the Trustees turned over control to the crown. Georgia became a colony, with a governor appointed by the king. The Province of Georgia was one of the Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution by signing the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the State of Georgias first constitution was ratified in February 1777. Georgia was the 10th state to ratify the Articles of Confederation on July 24,1778, in 1829, gold was discovered in the North Georgia mountains, which led to the Georgia Gold Rush and an established federal mint in Dahlonega, which continued its operation until 1861. The subsequent influx of white settlers put pressure on the government to land from the Cherokee Nation. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law, sending many eastern Native American nations to reservations in present-day Oklahoma, including all of Georgias tribes. Despite the Supreme Courts ruling in Worcester v. Georgia that ruled U. S. states were not permitted to redraw the Indian boundaries, President Jackson and the state of Georgia ignored the ruling. In 1838, his successor, Martin Van Buren, dispatched troops to gather the Cherokee
7.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
8.
Software
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Computer software, or simply software, is that part of a computer system that consists of data or computer instructions, in contrast to the physical hardware from which the system is built. In computer science and software engineering, computer software is all information processed by computer systems, programs, computer software includes computer programs, libraries and related non-executable data, such as online documentation or digital media. Computer hardware and software require each other and neither can be used on its own. At the lowest level, executable code consists of machine language instructions specific to an individual processor—typically a central processing unit, a machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a storage location in the computer—an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also cause something to appear on a display of the computer system—a state change which should be visible to the user. The processor carries out the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed to jump to a different instruction, the majority of software is written in high-level programming languages that are easier and more efficient for programmers, meaning closer to a natural language. High-level languages are translated into machine language using a compiler or an interpreter or a combination of the two, an outline for what would have been the first piece of software was written by Ada Lovelace in the 19th century, for the planned Analytical Engine. However, neither the Analytical Engine nor any software for it were ever created, the first theory about software—prior to creation of computers as we know them today—was proposed by Alan Turing in his 1935 essay Computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. This eventually led to the creation of the academic fields of computer science and software engineering. Computer science is more theoretical, whereas software engineering focuses on practical concerns. However, prior to 1946, software as we now understand it—programs stored in the memory of stored-program digital computers—did not yet exist, the first electronic computing devices were instead rewired in order to reprogram them. On virtually all platforms, software can be grouped into a few broad categories. There are many different types of software, because the range of tasks that can be performed with a modern computer is so large—see list of software. System software includes, Operating systems, which are collections of software that manage resources and provides common services for other software that runs on top of them. Supervisory programs, boot loaders, shells and window systems are parts of operating systems. In practice, an operating system bundled with additional software so that a user can potentially do some work with a computer that only has an operating system. Device drivers, which operate or control a particular type of device that is attached to a computer, utilities, which are computer programs designed to assist users in the maintenance and care of their computers
9.
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
10.
Gwinnett County, Georgia
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Gwinnett County is a county in the north central portion of the U. S. state of Georgia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 859,304, the county is named for Button Gwinnett, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Gwinnett County is included in the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA Metropolitan Statistical Area, created in 1818 by an act of the Georgia General Assembly, Gwinnett County was formed from parts of Jackson County and from lands gained through the cession of Indian lands. Named for Button Gwinnett, one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, the first county court was held at the home of Elisha Winn, in 1861, all three of Gwinnett County’s representatives at the Georgia Constitutional Convention in Milledgeville voted against secession. Towards the end of the war, several took place in Gwinnett County as part of the Atlanta Campaign. The northeastern part of Gwinnett County was removed to form a part of the new Barrow County in 1914. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 437 square miles. It is located along the Eastern Continental Divide, a portion of the county to the northwest is a part of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area chain. The regional reservoir, Lake Lanier, at the north of the county, is the central cause to the Tri-state water dispute. The southern and central portions of Gwinnett County are located in the Upper Ocmulgee River sub-basin of the Altamaha River basin, the county maintains a regional airport under the name Gwinnett County Airport, formerly, Briscoe Field. Xpress GA/ RTA Commuter buses and Gwinnett County Transit serve the county, as of the 2010 United States Census, there were 805,321 people,268,519 households, and 203,238 families residing in the county. The population density was 1,871.2 inhabitants per square mile, there were 291,547 housing units at an average density of 677.4 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 53. 3% White,23. 6% black or African American,10. 6% Asian,0. 5% American Indian,0. 1% Pacific Islander,8. 8% from other races, and 3. 1% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 20. 1% of the population, in terms of ancestry,8. 3% were German,7. 8% were Irish,7. 7% were English, and 5. 8% were American. The average household size was 2.98 and the family size was 3.40. The median age was 33.7 years, the median income for a household in the county was $63,219 and the median income for a family was $70,767. Males had an income of $48,671 versus $39,540 for females. The per capita income for the county was $26,901, about 8. 7% of families and 11. 0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15. 1% of those under age 18 and 8. 1% of those age 65 or over
11.
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
12.
Dell
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Dell Inc. is a multinational computer technology company based in Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. The company is a subsidiary of Dell Technologies, which was formed by the 2016 merger of Dell Inc. eponymously named after its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest technological corporations in the world, employing more than 103,300 people worldwide. Dell sells personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals, HDTVs, cameras, printers, MP3 players, and electronics built by other manufacturers. Dell was a pure hardware vendor for much of its existence, Dell was listed at number 51 in the Fortune 500 list, until 2014. After going private in 2013, the confidential nature of its financial information prevents the company from being ranked by Fortune. In 2015, it was the third largest PC vendor in the world after Lenovo, Dell is currently the #1 shipper of PC monitors in the world. Dell is the sixth largest company in Texas by total revenue and it is the second largest non-oil company in Texas – behind AT&T – and the largest company in the Greater Austin area. It was a traded company, as well as a component of the NASDAQ-100 and S&P500. On September 7,2016, Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corporation to form Dell Technologies, Michael Dell founded PCs Limited while a student of the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components, Dell dropped out of school to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting $1,000 in expansion-capital from his family. In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design, the Turbo PC, Dell appeared in PCs Limited advertisements in national magazines, asking readers to give us a chance to show you what can do. Selling directly to consumers custom-assembled computers according to a selection of options, in 1986, Michael Dell brought in Lee Walker, a 51-year-old venture capitalist, as president and chief operating officer, to serve as mentor and to implement Dells ideas for growing the company. Walker was also instrumental in recruiting members to the board of directors when the company went public in 1988, the company dropped the PC’s Limited name in 1987 to become Dell Computer Corporation and began expanding globally. In June 1988, Dells market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share. In 1992, Fortune magazine included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the worlds 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever. In 1993, to complement its own direct sales channel, Dell planned to sell PCs at big-box retail outlets such as Wal-Mart, bain consultant Kevin Rollins persuaded Michael Dell to pull out of these deals, believing they would be money losers in the long run. Margins at retail were thin at best and Dell left the channel in 1994. Rollins would soon join Dell full-time and eventually become the company President, Dell found an opportunity among PC-savvy individuals who liked the convenience of buying direct, customizing their PC to their means, and having it delivered in days
13.
Intel 80386
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The Intel 80386, also known as i386 or just 386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were the CPU of many workstations, the 32-bit 80386 can correctly execute most code intended for the earlier 16-bit processors such as 8088 and 80286 that were ubiquitous in early PCs. Over the years, successively newer implementations of the architecture have become several hundreds of times faster than the original 80386. A33 MHz 80386 was reportedly measured to operate at about 11.4 MIPS, the 80386 was introduced in October 1985, while manufacturing of the chips in significant quantities commenced in June 1986. Mainboards for 80386-based computer systems were cumbersome and expensive at first, in May 2006, Intel announced that 80386 production would stop at the end of September 2007. Although it had long been obsolete as a personal computer CPU, Intel, such systems using an 80386 or one of many derivatives are common in aerospace technology and electronic musical instruments, among others. Some mobile phones used the 80386 processor, such as BlackBerry 950. The processor was a significant evolution in the x86 architecture, the predecessor of the 80386 was the Intel 80286, a 16-bit processor with a segment-based memory management and protection system. The 80386 added a 32-bit architecture and a translation unit. It also offered support for register debugging, the 80386 featured three operating modes, real mode, protected mode and virtual mode. The protected mode which debuted in the 286 was extended to allow the 386 to address up to 4 GB of memory, the all new virtual 8086 mode made it possible to run one or more real mode programs in a protected environment, although some programs were not compatible. Several new instructions have been added to 386, BSF, BSR, BT, BTS, BTR, BTC, CDQ, CWDE, LFS, LGS, LSS, MOVSX, MOVZX, SETcc, SHLD, SHRD. Two new segment registers have been added for general purpose programs, debug registers DR0-DR7 were added for hardware breakpoints. New forms of MOV instruction are used to access them, chief architect in the development of the 80386 was John H. Crawford. He was responsible for extending the 80286 architecture and instruction set to 32-bit, the 80486 and P5 Pentium line of processors were descendants of the 80386 design. The following data types are supported and thus implemented by one or more 80386 machine instructions. Bit, bit field and bit string, 8-bit integer, either signed or unsigned. 16-bit integer, either signed or unsigned, 32-bit integer, either signed or unsigned
14.
Taiwan
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Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is a state in East Asia. Neighbours include China to the west, Japan to the northeast, Taiwan is the most populous state that is not a member of the United Nations, and the one with the largest economy. The island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, was inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines before the 17th century. After a brief rule by the Kingdom of Tungning, the island was annexed by the Qing dynasty, the Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War. While Taiwan was under Japanese rule, the Republic of China was established on the mainland in 1912 after the fall of the Qing dynasty, following the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945, the ROC took control of Taiwan. However, the resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the ROCs loss of the mainland to the Communists, and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949. As a founding member of the United Nations, the ROC continued to represent China at the United Nations until 1971, in the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization, creating a stable industrial economy. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it changed from a one-party military dictatorship dominated by the Kuomintang to a multi-party democracy with universal suffrage, Taiwan is the 22nd-largest economy in the world, and its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy. It is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, health care, public education, economic freedom, the PRC has consistently claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and asserted the ROC is no longer in legitimate existence. Under its One-China Policy the PRC refused diplomatic relations with any country that recognizes the ROC, the PRC has threatened the use of military force in response to any formal declaration of independence by Taiwan or if PRC leaders decide that peaceful unification is no longer possible. There are various names for the island of Taiwan in use today, the former name Formosa dates from 1542, when Portuguese sailors sighted the main island of Taiwan and named it Ilha Formosa, which means beautiful island. The name Formosa eventually replaced all others in European literature and was in use in English in the early 20th century. This name was adopted into the Chinese vernacular as the name of the sandbar. The modern word Taiwan is derived from this usage, which is seen in forms in Chinese historical records. Use of the current Chinese name was formalized as early as 1684 with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture, through its rapid development, the entire Formosan mainland eventually became known as Taiwan. The official name of the state is the Republic of China and it was a member of the United Nations representing China until 1971, when it lost its seat to the Peoples Republic of China. Over subsequent decades, the Republic of China has become known as Taiwan. In some contexts, especially ones from the ROC government
15.
Controller (computing)
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In computing and especially in computer hardware, a controller is a chip, an expansion card, or a stand-alone device that interfaces with a peripheral device. This may be a link between two parts of a computer or a controller on a device that manages the operation of that device. The term is used in the opposite sense to refer to a device by which the user controls the operation of the computer. In desktop computers the controller may be a plug in board, in mainframes the controller is usually either a separate device attached to a channel or integrated into the peripheral. Early desktop computers such as the IMSAI8080 used expansion boards for all controllers, disk controller, often integrated into modern disk drives. Disk array controller, also known as RAID controller, a type of storage controller Flash controller, or SSD controller, terminal Access Controller In IBM terminology a controller is a device that decodes the command and effects the operation of the device. In most mainframe systems a device-independent channel usually attaches to the CPU, the functions performed by the control unit are similar to the functions performed by a device driver program on smaller systems. Some devices have integrated control units, which are logically discrete but are included with the rather than requiring a separate box. Often a control unit can attach to multiple channels connected to a single or multiple systems
16.
LSI Corporation
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On May 6,2014, LSI Corporation was acquired by Broadcom Limited, formally Avago Technologies for $6.6 billion. LSI Stockholders voted in favor of the proposal in April 2014, merging the company into its parent, in 1981, Wilfred Corrigan, Bill OMeara, Rob Walker and Mitchell Mick Bohn founded LSI under the name LSI Logic in Milpitas, California. Wilfred Corrigan served as the CEO from 1981 until 2005, LSI initially was funded by venture capitalists, including Sequoia Capital with $6 million. In March 1982, a round of financing brought in another $16 million. LSI Logic went public with Nasdaq as LSI in May 1983 with the largest IPO to date of $153 million, in 1985, the firm entered into a joint venture with Kawasaki Steel—Japans third largest steel manufacturer—to build a $100 million wafer fabrication plant in Tsukuba, Japan. In 1987, SEMATECH was incorporated partially in result of the 1984 National Cooperative Research Act, SEMATECH is a research and development consortium to advance semiconductor and chip manufacturing. LSI Logic was among the 14 founding members, but withdrew from SEMATECH in January 1992, in July 1991, LSI entered into an agreement with Sanyo Electric of Japan to make a set of chips that translate an HDTV signal into a television image. LSI Logic started developing its CoreWare technology in 1992, in 1993, Sony Computer Entertainment chose LSI Logic as their ASIC partner, charged with fitting the PlayStation CPU on a single chip. LSI’s CoreWare could do it, while other offers made to Sony needed two chips, Sony also worked with LSI’s engineers develop the graphics engine, DMA controller, I/O and bus controllers. In 1995, LSI Logic acquired the remaining shares its Canadian subsidiary held, in 1997, Mint Technology, an engineering services company, was acquired by LSI. In August 1998 it bought Symbios Logic from Hyundai Electronic for $760 million cash, in February 1999, LSI acquired Seeq Technology, adding physical-layer based Ethernet technology to LSI’s product line. In May 2000, LSI acquired IntraServer for $70 million, with expectations to add their rapidly expanding customer base to LSI’s own. In November 2000, LSI acquired Syntax Systems, and in August 2001 the groups merged to become LSI Logic Storage Systems, in March 2001 LSI acquired C-Cube for $878 million in stock. In that same quarter, LSI introduced Gflx, a process technology. In September 2001 LSI acquired a RAID adapter division from American Megatrends in a million cash transaction. Included in this deal, LSI received AMI’s MegaRAID software intellectual property, LSI and Storage Technology Corporation entered an alliance making StorageTek the distributor of their co-branded storage products in January 2002. In August 2002 LSI acquired Mylex from IBM, to expand its storage technologies, in November 2003, LSI sold its Tsukuba, Japan facility to ROHM Company, Ltd. The Engenio division of LSI filed for its own IPO in 2004, in 2005, Abhi Talwalkar joined the company as president and CEO, and was also appointed to the board of directors
17.
BIOS
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The BIOS is a type of firmware used to perform hardware initialization during the booting process on IBM PC compatible computers, and to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs. The BIOS firmware is built into personal computers, and it is the first software they run when powered on, the name itself originates from the Basic Input/Output System used in the CP/M operating system in 1975. Originally proprietary to the IBM PC, the BIOS has been engineered by companies looking to create compatible systems. The fundamental purposes of the BIOS in modern PCs are to initialize and test the hardware components. Variations in the hardware are hidden by the BIOS from programs that use BIOS services instead of directly accessing the hardware. MS-DOS, which was the dominant PC operating system from the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, relied on BIOS services for disk, keyboard, and text display functions. Most BIOS implementations are specifically designed to work with a computer or motherboard model. This allows easy updates to the BIOS firmware so new features can be added or bugs can be fixed, unified Extensible Firmware Interface was designed as a successor to BIOS, aiming to address its technical shortcomings. As of 2014, new PC hardware predominantly ships with UEFI firmware, together with the underlying hardware-specific, but operating system-independent System BIOS, which resides in ROM, it represents the analogous to the CP/M BIOS. With the introduction of PS/2 machines, IBM divided the System BIOS into real-mode, the BIOS of the original IBM PC XT had no interactive user interface. Options on the IBM PC and XT were set by switches and jumpers on the main board, starting around the mid-1990s, it became typical for the BIOS ROM to include a BIOS configuration utility or BIOS setup utility, accessed at system power-up by a particular key sequence. This program allowed the user to set configuration options, of the type formerly set using DIP switches. The disk was supplied with the computer, and if it was lost the settings could not be changed. Instead of battery-backed RAM, the modern Wintel machine may store the BIOS configuration settings in flash ROM, early Intel processors started at physical address 000FFFF0h. When a modern x86 microprocessor is reset, it starts in pseudo 16-bit real mode, the code segment register is initialized with selector F000h, base FFFF0000h, and limit FFFFh, so that execution starts at 4 GB minus 16 bytes. The platform logic maps this address into the system ROM, mirroring address 000FFFF0h, if the system has just been powered up or the reset button was pressed, the full power-on self-test is run. This saves the time used to detect and test all memory. If the download was apparently successful, the BIOS would verify a checksum on it and then run it
18.
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
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The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI can support remote diagnostics and repair of computers, even with no operating system installed, Intel developed the original Extensible Firmware Interface specification. Some of the EFIs practices and data formats mirror those from Microsoft Windows, in 2005, UEFI deprecated EFI1.10. The Unified EFI Forum is the body that manages the UEFI specification. The original motivation for EFI came during early development of the first Intel–HP Itanium systems in the mid-1990s, BIOS limitations had become too restrictive for the larger server platforms Itanium was targeting. The effort to address these concerns began in 1998 and was initially called Intel Boot Initiative and it was later renamed to Extensible Firmware Interface. The original EFI specification remains owned by Intel, which exclusively provides licenses for EFI-based products, version 2.1 of the UEFI specification was released on 7 January 2007. It added cryptography, network authentication and the User Interface Architecture, the latest UEFI specification, version 2.6, was approved in January 2016. Only little-endian processors can be supported, unofficial UEFI support is under development for POWERPC64 by implementing TianoCore on top of OPAL, the OpenPOWER abstraction layer, running in little-endian mode. Similar projects exist for MIPS and RISC-V, standard PC BIOS is limited to a 16-bit processor mode and 1 MB of addressable memory space, resulting from the design based on the IBM5150 that used a 16-bit Intel 8088 processor. In comparison, the mode in a UEFI environment can be either 32-bit or 64-bit. 64-bit UEFI firmware implementations support long mode, which allows applications in the execution environment to use 64-bit addressing to get direct access to all of the machines memory. UEFI requires the firmware and operating system loader to be size-matched, for example, after the system transitions from Boot Services to Runtime Services, the operating system kernel takes over. At this point, the kernel can change processor modes if it desires, UEFI handover protocol deduplicates the UEFI initialization code between the kernel and UEFI boot loaders, leaving the initialization to be performed only by the Linux kernels UEFI boot stub. In particular, the MBR limits on the number and size of disk partitions are relaxed, more specifically, GPT allows for a maximum disk and partition size of 8 ZiB. Support for GPT in Linux is enabled by turning on the option CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION during kernel configuration and this option allows Linux to recognize and use GPT disks after the system firmware passes control over the system to Linux. For reverse compatibility, Linux can use GPT disks in BIOS-based systems for data storage and booting, as both GRUB2 and Linux are GPT-aware. Such a setup is referred to as BIOS-GPT
19.
SGPIO
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Serial General Purpose Input/Output is a four-signal bus used between a host bus adapter and a backplane. Of the four signals, three are driven by the HBA and one by the backplane, typically, the HBA is a storage controller located inside a server, desktop, rack or workstation computer that interfaces with hard disk drives to store and retrieve data. It is considered an extension of the general-purpose input/output concept, the SGPIO specification is maintained by the Small Form Factor committee in the SFF-8485 standard. The International Blinking Pattern Interpretation indicates how SGPIO signals are interpreted into blinking light-emitting diodes on disk arrays, the SGPIO signal consists of 4 electrical signals, it typically originates from a host bus adapter. IPass connectors carry both SAS/SATA electrical connections between the HBA and the drives as well as the 4 SGPIO signals. A backplane is a board with connectors and power circuitry into which hard drives are attached, they can have multiple slots. Although many hardware vendors define their own proprietary LED blinking pattern, the SGPIO bus consists of 4 signal lines and originates at the HBA, referred to as the initiator and ends at a backplane, referred to as the target. If a backplane is not present the HBA may still drive the bus without any harm to the system, if one does exist, the SGPIO bus is an open collector bus with 2. The SGPIO bus has a clock line driven by the initiator. This line carries 3 bits of data from the HBA to the backplane, the first bit typically carries activity, the second bit carries locate, a low value for the first bit indicates no activity and a high value indicates activity. This line is used by the backplane and indicates some condition on the back to the HBA. The first bit being high commonly indicates the presence of a drive, the two following bits are typically unused, and driven low. Because this line would be high for all 3 bits when no backplane is connected, the SDataIn and SdataOut then repeats with 3 clocks per drive until the last drive is reached, and the cycle starts over again. Most products shipping with support for SAS and SATA drives support this standard, the SGPIO spec calls for the target to turn off all indicators when SClock, SLoad and SDataOut have been high for 64 ms, in practice this is not consistently followed by all vendors. Also, in some implementations the clock may be halted sporadically or stopped during or between cycles. Another — rather impractical — variation between vendors is the state in which the clock is left after a cycle. The length of the bit stream varies between HBA or storage controller, some vendors will stop the bit-stream when reaching the desired drive, some SAS-expanders bit streams may be as long as 108 bits
20.
Android (operating system)
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Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based on the Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. In addition to devices, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars. Variants of Android are also used on notebooks, game consoles, digital cameras, beginning with the first commercial Android device in September 2008, the operating system has gone through multiple major releases, with the current version being 7.0 Nougat, released in August 2016. Android applications can be downloaded from the Google Play store, which features over 2.7 million apps as of February 2017, Android has been the best-selling OS on tablets since 2013, and runs on the vast majority of smartphones. In September 2015, Android had 1.4 billion monthly active users, Android is popular with technology companies that require a ready-made, low-cost and customizable operating system for high-tech devices. The success of Android has made it a target for patent, Android Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California in October 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White. Rubin described the Android project as tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are aware of its owners location. The early intentions of the company were to develop an operating system for digital cameras. Despite the past accomplishments of the founders and early employees, Android Inc. operated secretly and that same year, Rubin ran out of money. Steve Perlman, a friend of Rubin, brought him $10,000 in cash in an envelope. In July 2005, Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million and its key employees, including Rubin, Miner and White, joined Google as part of the acquisition. Not much was known about Android at the time, with Rubin having only stated that they were making software for mobile phones, at Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. Google marketed the platform to handset makers and carriers on the promise of providing a flexible, upgradeable system, Google had lined up a series of hardware components and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation. Speculation about Googles intention to enter the communications market continued to build through December 2006. In September 2007, InformationWeek covered an Evalueserve study reporting that Google had filed several patent applications in the area of mobile telephony, the first commercially available smartphone running Android was the HTC Dream, also known as T-Mobile G1, announced on September 23,2008. Since 2008, Android has seen numerous updates which have improved the operating system, adding new features. Each major release is named in order after a dessert or sugary treat, with the first few Android versions being called Cupcake, Donut, Eclair. In 2010, Google launched its Nexus series of devices, a lineup in which Google partnered with different device manufacturers to produce new devices and introduce new Android versions
21.
Power-on self-test
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A power-on self-test is a process performed by firmware or software routines immediately after a computer or other digital electronic device is powered on. The results of the POST may be displayed on a panel that is part of the device, output to an external device, or stored for future retrieval by a diagnostic tool. Since a self-test might detect that the systems usual human-readable display is non-functional, in addition to running tests, the POST process may also set the initial state of the device from firmware. In the case of a computer, the POST routines are part of a devices pre-boot sequence and these other duty-specific programs are generally known collectively as option ROMs or individually as the video BIOS, SCSI BIOS, etc. The first memory location the CPU tries to execute is known as the reset vector, in the case of a hard reboot, the northbridge will direct this code fetch to the BIOS located on the system flash memory. For a warm boot, the BIOS will be located in the place in RAM. During the POST flow of a contemporary BIOS, one of the first things a BIOS should do is determine the reason it is executing, for a cold boot, for example, it may need to execute all of its functionality. The POST flow for the PC has developed from a simple, straightforward process to one that is complex. In earlier BIOSes, up to around the turn of the millennium and this design by IBM was modeled after their larger systems, which would perform a complete hardware test as part of their cold-start process. Beginning with the IBM XT, a count was displayed during POST instead of a blank screen. A modern PC with a bus rate of around 1 GHz and a 32-bit bus might be 2000x or even 5000x faster, but it might have more than 3 GB of memory—5000x more. Most clone PC BIOSes allowed the user to skip the POST RAM check by pressing a key, in addition, modern DRAM is significantly more reliable than DRAM was in the 1980s. As part of the sequence the POST routines may display a prompt to the user for a key press to access built-in setup functions of the BIOS. This allows the user to set various options particular to the board before the operating system is loaded. If no key is pressed, the POST will proceed on to the sequence required to load the installed operating system. The original IBM BIOS made POST diagnostic information available by outputting a number to I/O port 80, using a logic analyzer or a dedicated POST card—an interface card that shows port 80 output on a small display—a technician could determine the origin of the problem. Once an operating system is running on the computer the code displayed by such a board may become meaningless, since some OSes, e. g. Linux, the actual numeric codes for the possible stages and error conditions differ from one BIOS supplier to another. Codes for different BIOS versions from a supplier may also vary
22.
A20 line
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The A20, or addressing line 20, is one of the electrical lines that make up the system bus of an x86-based computer system. The A20 line in particular is used to transmit the 21st bit on the address bus, a microprocessor typically has a number of addressing lines equal to the base-two logarithm of its physical addressing space. For example, a processor with 4 GB of physical addressing space requires 32 lines, the lines are named after the zero-based number of the bit in the address that they are transmitting. The least significant bit is first and is therefore numbered bit 0, A20 transmits bit 20 and becomes active once addresses reach 1 MB, or 220. The early Intel 8086, Intel 8088, and Intel 80186 processors had 20 address lines, numbered A0 to A19, with these, internal address registers of such processors only had 16 bits. To access a 20-bit address space, a memory reference was made up of a 16-bit Offset address added to a 16-bit Segment number. The resulting address is equal to Segment *16 + Offset, there are many combinations of segment and offset that produce the same 20-bit physical address. Therefore, there were ways to address the same byte in memory. The only way to them was to choose a segment value that when added to 0xFEF0, resulted in a physical address of 0x001000C0. When IBM designed the IBM PC AT machine, it decided to use the new higher-performance Intel 80286 microprocessor, the 80286 could address up to 16 MB of system memory in protected mode. However, the CPU was supposed to emulate an 8086s behavior in real mode, its startup mode, the 80286 had a bug, it failed to force the A20 line to zero in real mode. Therefore, the combination F800,8000 would no longer point to the physical address 0x00000000, as a result, some DOS programs would no longer work. To remain compatible with programs, IBM decided to fix the problem on the motherboard. That was accomplished by inserting a logic gate on the A20 line between the processor and system bus, which got named Gate-A20, Gate-A20 can be enabled or disabled by software to allow or prevent the address bus from receiving a signal from A20. It is set to non-passing for the execution of programs which rely on the wrap-around. At boot time, the BIOS first enables Gate-A20 when it counts and tests all of the systems memory, originally, the logic gate was a gate connected to the Intel 8042 keyboard controller. Controlling it was a slow process. Other methods have since added to allow for more efficient multitasking of programs which require this wrap-around with programs that access all of the systems memory
23.
Video RAM (dual-ported DRAM)
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Video RAM, or VRAM, is a dual-ported variant of dynamic RAM, which was once commonly used to store the framebuffer in some graphics adapters. It was invented by F. Dill, D. Ling and R. Matick at IBM Research in 1980, the first commercial use of VRAM was in a high-resolution graphics adapter introduced in 1986 by IBM for the PC/RT system, which set a new standard for graphics displays. Prior to the development of VRAM, dual-ported memory was quite expensive, VRAM improved the overall framebuffer throughput, allowing low cost, high-resolution, high-speed, color graphics. Modern GUI-based operating systems benefitted from this and thus it provided a key ingredient for proliferation of graphic user interfaces throughout the world at that time, VRAM has two sets of data output pins, and thus two ports that can be used simultaneously. The first port, the DRAM port, is accessed by the host computer in a very similar to traditional DRAM. The second port, the port, is typically read-only and is dedicated to providing a high throughput. Typical DRAM arrays normally access a full row of bits at up to 1,024 bits at one time, but only use one or a few of these for actual data, since DRAM cells are destructively read, each row accessed must be sensed, and re-written. Thus,1,024 sense amplifiers are typically used, VRAM operates by not discarding the excess bits which must be accessed, but making full use of them in a simple way. This will leave access to the DRAM array free to be accessed for many cycles, a complete DRAM read cycle is only required to fill the row buffer, leaving most DRAM cycles available for normal accesses. Such operation is described in the paper All points addressable raster display memory by R. Matick, D. Ling, S. Gupta, and F. Dill, IBM Journal of R&D, Vol 28, No. To use the port, the controller first uses the DRAM port to select the row of the memory array that is to be displayed. The VRAM then copies that entire row to an internal row-buffer which is a shift register, the controller can then continue to use the DRAM port for drawing objects on the display. Meanwhile, the controller feeds a clock called the clock to the VRAMs video port. Each SCLK pulse causes the VRAM to deliver the data bit, in strict address order. For simplicity, the adapter is usually designed so that the contents of a row. Through the 1990s, many graphic subsystems used VRAM, with the number of megabits touted as a selling point. In the late 1990s, synchronous DRAM technologies gradually became affordable, dense, nevertheless, many of the VRAM concepts of internal, on-chip buffering and organization have been used and improved in modern graphics adapters
24.
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
25.
PC clone
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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
26.
Substitution cipher
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The receiver deciphers the text by performing the inverse substitution. Substitution ciphers can be compared with transposition ciphers, in a transposition cipher, the units of the plaintext are rearranged in a different and usually quite complex order, but the units themselves are left unchanged. By contrast, in a cipher, the units of the plaintext are retained in the same sequence in the ciphertext. There are a number of different types of substitution cipher, if the cipher operates on single letters, it is termed a simple substitution cipher, a cipher that operates on larger groups of letters is termed polygraphic. Substitution of single letters separately—simple substitution—can be demonstrated by writing out the alphabet in order to represent the substitution. This is termed a substitution alphabet, the cipher alphabet may be shifted or reversed or scrambled in a more complex fashion, in which case it is called a mixed alphabet or deranged alphabet. Traditionally, mixed alphabets may be created by first writing out a keyword, removing repeated letters in it, using this system, the keyword zebras gives us the following alphabets, A message of flee at once. These blocks are called groups, and sometimes a group count is given as an additional check and these can be any characters that decrypt to obvious nonsense, so the receiver can easily spot them and discard them. The ciphertext alphabet is different from the plaintext alphabet, for example, in the pigpen cipher. In lists and catalogues for salespeople, a simple encryption is sometimes used to replace numeric digits by letters. Example, MAT would be used to represent 120, a disadvantage of this method of derangement is that the last letters of the alphabet tend to stay at the end. A stronger way of constructing a mixed alphabet is to perform a columnar transposition on the alphabet using the keyword. Although the number of keys is very large, this cipher is not very strong. Provided the message is of length, the cryptanalyst can deduce the probable meaning of the most common symbols by analyzing the frequency distribution of the ciphertext. This allows formation of words, which can be tentatively filled in. Many people solve such ciphers for recreation, as with cryptogram puzzles in the newspaper, according to the unicity distance of English,27.6 letters of ciphertext are required to crack a mixed alphabet simple substitution. In practice, typically about 50 letters are needed, although some messages can be broken with fewer if unusual patterns are found. In other cases, the plaintext can be contrived to have a flat frequency distribution
27.
Delete key
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The delete key is a key on most computer keyboards which typically is used to delete either the character ahead of or beneath the cursor, or the currently-selected object. The key appears on English-language IBM-compatible PC keyboards labeled as Delete or Del, however, sometimes the key labelled Delete performs the Backspace function instead, for example on some Apple keyboards. In other cases, the Delete key is in its original IBM notebook position of above, many laptops add rows of smaller keys above the Function key line to add keys on a non-standard size keyboard. On this row of keys, the position of the Delete key is positioned at or near the right-hand end. On Apples line of laptops, the forward delete function can be achieved using the Fn+← Backspace key combination. The key is used by many GUI applications to request deletion of the currently-selected object. The delete key often works as a command to remove a selected object. On Unix-like systems, the key is usually mapped to ESC[3~ which is the VT220 escape code for the delete character key. The delete key, on modern motherboards, also functions to open the BIOS setup screen when pressed after starting the computer. In other GUI contexts, the Undo function can often reverse a deletion, for example, installing and enabling the DoubleCommand application allows the user to use the Backslash, Capslock or numeric keypad ↵ Enter keys as a forward delete key
28.
MS-DOS
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MS-DOS is a discontinued operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. MS-DOS resulted from a request in 1981 by IBM for a system to use in its IBM PC range of personal computers. Microsoft quickly bought the rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, IBM licensed and released it in August 1981 as PC DOS1.0 for use in their PCs. During its life, several competing products were released for the x86 platform and it was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI. It is a operating system, and consumes negligible installation space. MS-DOS was a form of 86-DOS – owned by Seattle Computer Products. This first version was shipped in August 1980, Microsoft, which needed an operating system for the IBM Personal Computer hired Tim Paterson in May 1981 and bought 86-DOS1.10 for $75,000 in July of the same year. Microsoft kept the number, but renamed it MS-DOS. They also licensed MS-DOS1. 10/1.14 to IBM, within a year Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies. It was designed to be an OS that could run on any 8086-family computer, thus, there were many different versions of MS-DOS for different hardware, and there is a major distinction between an IBM-compatible machine and an MS-DOS machine. This design would have worked well for compatibility, if application programs had only used MS-DOS services to perform device I/O, Microsoft omitted multi-user support from MS-DOS because Microsofts Unix-based operating system, Xenix, was fully multi-user. After the breakup of the Bell System, however, AT&T Computer Systems started selling UNIX System V, believing that it could not compete with AT&T in the Unix market, Microsoft abandoned Xenix, and in 1987 transferred ownership of Xenix to the Santa Cruz Operation. On 25 March 2014, Microsoft made the code to SCP MS-DOS1.25, as an April Fools joke in 2015, Microsoft Mobile launched a Windows Phone application called MS-DOS Mobile which was presented as a new mobile operating system and worked similar to MS-DOS. Version 3.1 – Support for Microsoft Networks Version 3.2 – First version to support 3.5 inch,720 kB floppy drives and diskettes. Version 3.21 Version 3.22 – Version 3.25 Version 3.3 – First version to support 3.5 inch,1.44 MB floppy drives and diskettes, Version 3. 3a Version 3.31 – supports FAT16B and larger drives. MS-DOS4.0 and MS-DOS4.1 – A separate branch of development with additional multitasking features and it is unrelated to any later versions, including versions 4.00 and 4.01 listed below MS-DOS4. x – includes a graphical/mouse interface. It had many bugs and compatibility issues. Version 4.00 – First version to support a hard disk partition that is greater than 32 MiB. Version 4.01 – Microsoft rewritten Version 4.00 released under MS-DOS label, First version to introduce volume serial number when formatting hard disks and floppy disks
29.
Microsoft Windows
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Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone, defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20,1985, Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system, however, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold and this comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones, the most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console, Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the time and share the same kernel. Windows, The operating system for personal computers, tablets. The latest version is Windows 10, the main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple Inc. for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server, The operating system for server computers, the latest version is Windows Server 2016. Unlike its clients sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme, the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE, A lightweight version of its Windows sibling meant to operate as an operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers. The latest version is Windows PE10.0.10586.0, Windows Embedded, Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device that was too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. The following Windows families are no longer being developed, Windows 9x, Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile, The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile operating system
30.
StorTrends
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StorTrends is a brand name of disk-based, hybrid array, and solid state storage products for computer data storage in data centers, sold by American Megatrends. StorTrends started in 2004 as the storage area network and network-attached storage product division of American Megatrends, in 2011, StorTrends released the 3400i dual controller SAN unit. In January 2014, it released the 3500i SSD hybrid SAN array as the first hybrid system with tandem SSD Caching, similar to the 3400i, the 3500i received third-party validation from analysts at the Taneja Group, among others. In March 2015, StorTrends released the 3600i and 3610i All Flash SAN models with inline compression and deduplication technology support with a price tag of $24,999. In July 2015, StorTrends won a Most Valuable Product award from Computer Technology Review for the 3600i All Flash SAN, StorTrends units are shipped with SSDs, spinning HDDs, or a mixture of the two known as an SSD Hybrid Array. The StorTrends 3400i is a spinning-disk SAN with expansion capabilities up to 256TB, the StorTrends 3500i is an SSD hybrid SAN that offers both SSD caching and SSD tiering in the same appliance in order to preserve flash performance for both frequently accessed data and random IO. The StorTrends 2610i is an All Flash Array with deduplication, compression, the 3600i is an All Flash SAN with a specified Read Tier and Write Tier to increase the lifespan of the flash drives. The StorTrends appliances range from 2TB to 256TB of raw storage capacity and its SAN products utilize the iSCSI protocol and support 1GbE and 10GbE connectivity options. The StorTrends models and specifications are shown below, StorTrends iTX architecture is an enterprise class feature set founded on 50 storage-based patents with over 70 additional patents pending, All of the StorTrends appliances are shipped pre-installed with the StorTrends iTX architecture. StorAID is offered in 1 year,3 year and 5 year terms with one year renewal options, storAid is offered standard with NBD onsite hardware replacement or optional 4-hour mission critical onsite support through StorAID Plus. StorAID support is conducted by members of the StorTrends Support Team from Norcross, StorTrends is VMware, Microsoft and Citrix certified. VMware Support, TAP Elite Partner, VAAI Support, vSphere Client Plug-in VMware ESX3.5, StorTrends maintains international branch offices and channel partners that serve a worldwide market in varying degrees and capacities. In March 2014, StorTrends was awarded a 5-star rating in CRNs 2014 Partner Program Guide, StorTrends units have been deployed for virtualization, high performance applications/databases, VDI, disaster recovery, archival and cloud storage solutions
31.
High-availability cluster
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High-availability clusters are groups of computers that support server applications that can be reliably utilized with a minimum amount of down-time. They operate by using high availability software to harness redundant computers in groups or clusters that provide continued service when system components fail, without clustering, if a server running a particular application crashes, the application will be unavailable until the crashed server is fixed. As part of process, clustering software may configure the node before starting the application on it. For example, appropriate file systems may need to be imported and mounted, network hardware may have to be configured, HA clusters are often used for critical databases, file sharing on a network, business applications, and customer services such as electronic commerce websites. HA clusters usually use a private network connection which is used to monitor the health. If that happens, each node in the cluster may mistakenly decide that every node has gone down. Having duplicate instances of services may cause data corruption on the shared storage, not every application can run in a high-availability cluster environment, and the necessary design decisions need to be made early in the software design phase. In practical terms, this means the application must have a command line interface or scripts to control the application, the application must be able to use shared storage. Most importantly, the application must store as much of its state on non-volatile shared storage as possible, equally important is the ability to restart on another node at the last state before failure using the saved state from the shared storage. The application must not corrupt data if it crashes, or restarts from the saved state. The most common size for an HA cluster is a cluster, since that is the minimum required to provide redundancy. This is usually only possible when the use a homogeneous software configuration. Active/passive — Provides a fully redundant instance of each node, which is brought online when its associated primary node fails. This configuration typically requires the most extra hardware, n+1 — Provides a single extra node that is brought online to take over the role of the node that has failed. In the case of heterogeneous software configuration on each primary node and this normally refers to clusters that have multiple services running simultaneously, in the single service case, this degenerates to active/passive. N+M — In cases where a cluster is managing many services. In such cases, more than one standby servers are included, the number of standby servers is a tradeoff between cost and reliability requirements. The terms logical host or cluster logical host is used to describe the network address that is used to access services provided by the cluster and this logical host identity is not tied to a single cluster node
32.
Software developer
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A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process, including the research, design, programming, and testing of computer software. Other job titles which are used with similar meanings are programmer, software analyst. According to developer Eric Sink, the differences between system design, software development, and programming are more apparent, even more so that developers become systems architects, those who design the multi-leveled architecture or component interactions of a large software system. In a large company, there may be employees whose sole responsibility consists of one of the phases above. In smaller development environments, a few people or even an individual might handle the complete process. The word software was coined as a prank as early as 1953, before this time, computers were programmed either by customers, or the few commercial computer vendors of the time, such as UNIVAC and IBM. The first company founded to provide products and services was Computer Usage Company in 1955. The software industry expanded in the early 1960s, almost immediately after computers were first sold in mass-produced quantities, universities, government, and business customers created a demand for software. Many of these programs were written in-house by full-time staff programmers, some were distributed freely between users of a particular machine for no charge. Others were done on a basis, and other firms such as Computer Sciences Corporation started to grow. The computer/hardware makers started bundling operating systems, systems software and programming environments with their machines, new software was built for microcomputers, so other manufacturers including IBM, followed DECs example quickly, resulting in the IBM AS/400 amongst others. The industry expanded greatly with the rise of the computer in the mid-1970s. In the following years, it created a growing market for games, applications. DOS, Microsofts first operating system product, was the dominant operating system at the time, by 2014 the role of cloud developer had been defined, in this context, one definition of a developer in general was published, Developers make software for the world to use. The job of a developer is to crank out code -- fresh code for new products, code fixes for maintenance, code for business logic, bus factor Software Developer description from the US Department of Labor
33.
Software release life cycle
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Usage of the alpha/beta test terminology originated at IBM. As long ago as the 1950s, IBM used similar terminology for their hardware development, a test was the verification of a new product before public announcement. B test was the verification before releasing the product to be manufactured, C test was the final test before general availability of the product. Martin Belsky, a manager on some of IBMs earlier software projects claimed to have invented the terminology, IBM dropped the alpha/beta terminology during the 1960s, but by then it had received fairly wide notice. The usage of beta test to refer to testing done by customers was not done in IBM, rather, IBM used the term field test. Pre-alpha refers to all activities performed during the project before formal testing. These activities can include requirements analysis, software design, software development, in typical open source development, there are several types of pre-alpha versions. Milestone versions include specific sets of functions and are released as soon as the functionality is complete, the alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing. In this phase, developers generally test the software using white-box techniques, additional validation is then performed using black-box or gray-box techniques, by another testing team. Moving to black-box testing inside the organization is known as alpha release, alpha software can be unstable and could cause crashes or data loss. Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version, in general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon in proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions. The alpha phase usually ends with a freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature complete, Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. Software in the stage is also known as betaware. Beta phase generally begins when the software is complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs. Software in the phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing, the process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it. Beta version software is useful for demonstrations and previews within an organization
34.
Operating system
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An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 83. 3%. MacOS by Apple Inc. is in place, and the varieties of Linux is in third position. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors, other specialized classes of operating systems, such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. A single-tasking system can run one program at a time. Multi-tasking may be characterized in preemptive and co-operative types, in preemptive multitasking, the operating system slices the CPU time and dedicates a slot to each of the programs. Unix-like operating systems, e. g. Solaris, Linux, cooperative multitasking is achieved by relying on each process to provide time to the other processes in a defined manner. 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows used cooperative multi-tasking, 32-bit versions of both Windows NT and Win9x, used preemptive multi-tasking. Single-user operating systems have no facilities to distinguish users, but may allow multiple programs to run in tandem, a distributed operating system manages a group of distinct computers and makes them appear to be a single computer. The development of networked computers that could be linked and communicate with each other gave rise to distributed computing, distributed computations are carried out on more than one machine. When computers in a work in cooperation, they form a distributed system. The technique is used both in virtualization and cloud computing management, and is common in large server warehouses, embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems. They are designed to operate on small machines like PDAs with less autonomy and they are able to operate with a limited number of resources. They are very compact and extremely efficient by design, Windows CE and Minix 3 are some examples of embedded operating systems. A real-time operating system is a system that guarantees to process events or data by a specific moment in time. A real-time operating system may be single- or multi-tasking, but when multitasking, early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could run different programs in succession to speed up processing
35.
Windows 7
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Windows 7 is a personal computer operating system developed by Microsoft. It is a part of the Windows NT family of operating systems, Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22,2009, and became generally available on October 22,2009, less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7s server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time, Windows 7 continued improvements on Windows Aero with the addition of a redesigned taskbar that allows applications to be pinned to it, and new window management features. Other new features were added to the system, including libraries, the new file sharing system HomeGroup. A new Action Center interface was added to provide an overview of system security and maintenance information. Windows 7 also shipped with updated versions of several applications, including Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player. Windows 7 was a success for Microsoft, even prior to its official release. Originally, a version of Windows codenamed Blackcomb was planned as the successor to Windows XP, major features were planned for Blackcomb, including an emphasis on searching and querying data and an advanced storage system named WinFS to enable such scenarios. However, an interim, minor release, codenamed Longhorn, was announced for 2003, by the middle of 2003, however, Longhorn had acquired some of the features originally intended for Blackcomb. Development of Longhorn was also restarted, and thus delayed, in August 2004, a number of features were cut from Longhorn. Blackcomb was renamed Vienna in early 2006, as such, adoption of Vista in comparison to XP remained somewhat low. In July 2007, six months following the release of Vista, it was reported that the next version of Windows would then be codenamed Windows 7. Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, suggested that Windows 7 would be more user-centric, Gates later said that Windows 7 would also focus on performance improvements. Senior Vice President Bill Veghte stated that Windows Vista users migrating to Windows 7 would not find the kind of device compatibility issues they encountered migrating from Windows XP, an estimated 1,000 developers worked on Windows 7. These were broadly divided into core operating system and Windows client experience, in October 2008, it was announced that Windows 7 would also be the official name of the operating system. The first external release to select Microsoft partners came in January 2008 with Milestone 1, at PDC2008, Microsoft demonstrated Windows 7 with its reworked taskbar. On December 27,2008, the Windows 7 Beta was leaked onto the Internet via BitTorrent. According to a performance test by ZDNet, Windows 7 Beta beat both Windows XP and Vista in several key areas, including boot and shutdown time and working with files, such as loading documents
36.
Windows 8
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Windows 8 is a personal computer operating system developed by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. Development of Windows 8 started before the release of its predecessor, Windows 7 and it was announced at CES2011, and followed by the release of three pre-release versions from September 2011 to May 2012. The operating system was released to manufacturing on August 1,2012, Windows 8 added support for USB3.0, Advanced Format hard drives, near field communications, and cloud computing. Windows 8 was released to a critical reception. Despite these shortcomings,60 million Windows 8 licenses were sold through January 2013, on October 17,2013, Microsoft released Windows 8.1. It addressed some aspects of Windows 8 that were criticized by reviewers and early adopters, Windows 8 was ultimately succeeded by Windows 10 in July 2015. Support for Windows 8 RTM ended on January 12,2016, per Microsoft lifecycle policies regarding service packs, Windows 8.1 must be installed to maintain support, Windows 8 development started before Windows 7 had shipped in 2009. Three milestone releases of Windows 8 leaked to the general public, milestone 1, Build 7850, was leaked on April 12,2011. It was the first build where the text of a window was written centered instead of aligned to the left and it was also probably the first appearance of the Metro-style font, and its wallpaper had the text shhh. Lets not leak our hard work, however, its detailed build number reveals that the build was created on September 22,2010. The leaked copy was Enterprise edition, the OS still reads as Windows 7. Milestone 2, Build 7955, was leaked on April 25,2011, the traditional Blue Screen of Death was replaced by a new black screen, although this was later scrapped. This build introduced a new ribbon in Windows Explorer, Build 7959, with minor changes but the first 64-bit version, was leaked on May 1,2011. The Windows 7 logo was replaced with text displaying Microsoft Confidential. On June 17,2011, build 7989 64-bit edition was leaked and it introduced a new boot screen featuring the same fish as the default Windows 7 Beta wallpaper, which was later scrapped, and the circling dots as featured in the final. It also had the text Welcome below them, although this was also scrapped, on June 1,2011, Microsoft unveiled Windows 8s new user interface, as well as additional features at both Computex Taipei and the D9, All Things Digital conference in California. The Building Windows 8 blog launched on August 15,2011, featuring details surrounding Windows 8s features, Microsoft unveiled more Windows 8 features and improvements on the first day of the Build conference on September 13,2011. Microsoft released the first public build of Windows 8, Windows Developer Preview at the event
37.
Windows 8.1
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Windows 8.1 is an upgrade for Windows 8, a computer operating system released by Microsoft. Windows 8.1 is available free of charge for copies of Windows 8. However, unlike previous service packs, Windows 8.1 cannot be acquired via Windows Update, Windows 8.1 also added support for such emerging technologies as high-resolution displays, 3D printing, Wi-Fi Direct, and Miracast streaming, as well as the ReFS file system. Despite these improvements, Windows 8.1 was still criticized for not addressing all digressions of Windows 8, as of March 2017, the market share of Windows 8.1 is 6. 66%. com, and SkyDrive. Lending credibility to the reports, Foley noted that a Microsoft staff member had listed experience with Windows Blue on his LinkedIn profile, a post-RTM build of Windows 8, build 9364, was leaked in March 2013. Shortly afterward on March 26,2013, corporate president of corporate communications Frank X. In early May, press reports announcing the upcoming version in Financial Times, the theme was then echoed and debated in the computer press. Shaw rejected this criticism as extreme, adding that he saw a comparison with Diet Coke as more appropriate, on May 14, Microsoft officially announced that Blue would be named Windows 8.1. Following a keynote presentation focusing on this version, the beta of Windows 8.1 was released on June 26,2013 during Build. Build 9600 of Windows 8.1 was released to OEM hardware partners on August 27,2013, however, after criticism, Microsoft reversed its decision and released the RTM build on MSDN and TechNet on September 9,2013. Prior to the release of Windows 8.1, Microsoft premiered a new television commercial in late-September 2013 that focused on its changes as part of the Windows Everywhere campaign, shortly after its release, Windows RT8. On October 21,2013, Microsoft confirmed that the bug was limited to the original Surface tablet, the company released recovery media and instructions which could be used to repair the device, and restored access to Windows RT8.1 the next day. It was also found changes to screen resolution handling on Windows 8. Users also found the issues to be pronounced when using gaming mice with high resolution and/or polling rates. Microsoft released a patch to fix the bug on certain games in November 2013, on April 8,2014, Microsoft released the Windows 8.1 Update, which included all past updates plus new features. It was unveiled by Microsoft vice president Joe Belfiore at Mobile World Congress on February 23,2014, and detailed in full at Microsofts Build conference on April 2. Belfiore noted that the update would lower the minimum requirements for Windows. Unlike Windows 8.1 itself, this update is distributed through Windows Update
38.
Software license
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A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law all software is copyright protected, in code as also object code form. The only exception is software in the public domain, most distributed software can be categorized according to its license type. Two common categories for software under copyright law, and therefore with licenses which grant the licensee specific rights, are proprietary software and free, unlicensed software outside the copyright protection is either public domain software or software which is non-distributed, non-licensed and handled as internal business trade secret. Contrary to popular belief, distributed unlicensed software is copyright protected. Examples for this are unauthorized software leaks or software projects which are placed on public software repositories like GitHub without specified license. As voluntarily handing software into the domain is problematic in some international law domains, there are also licenses granting PD-like rights. Therefore, the owner of a copy of software is legally entitled to use that copy of software. Hence, if the end-user of software is the owner of the respective copy, as many proprietary licenses only enumerate the rights that the user already has under 17 U. S. C. §117, and yet proclaim to take away from the user. Proprietary software licenses often proclaim to give software publishers more control over the way their software is used by keeping ownership of each copy of software with the software publisher. The form of the relationship if it is a lease or a purchase, for example UMG v. Augusto or Vernor v. Autodesk. The ownership of goods, like software applications and video games, is challenged by licensed. The Swiss based company UsedSoft innovated the resale of business software and this feature of proprietary software licenses means that certain rights regarding the software are reserved by the software publisher. Therefore, it is typical of EULAs to include terms which define the uses of the software, the most significant effect of this form of licensing is that, if ownership of the software remains with the software publisher, then the end-user must accept the software license. In other words, without acceptance of the license, the end-user may not use the software at all, one example of such a proprietary software license is the license for Microsoft Windows. The most common licensing models are per single user or per user in the appropriate volume discount level, Licensing per concurrent/floating user also occurs, where all users in a network have access to the program, but only a specific number at the same time. Another license model is licensing per dongle which allows the owner of the dongle to use the program on any computer, Licensing per server, CPU or points, regardless the number of users, is common practice as well as site or company licenses
