1.
Computing
–
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating a mathematical sequence of steps known as an algorithm — e. g. through computers. The field of computing includes computer engineering, software engineering, computer science, information systems, the ACM Computing Curricula 2005 defined computing as follows, In a general way, we can define computing to mean any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computers. For example, an information systems specialist will view computing somewhat differently from a software engineer, regardless of the context, doing computing well can be complicated and difficult. Because society needs people to do computing well, we must think of computing not only as a profession, the fundamental question underlying all computing is What can be automated. The term computing is also synonymous with counting and calculating, in earlier times, it was used in reference to the action performed by mechanical computing machines, and before that, to human computers. Computing is intimately tied to the representation of numbers, but long before abstractions like the number arose, there were mathematical concepts to serve the purposes of civilization. These concepts include one-to-one correspondence, comparison to a standard, the earliest known tool for use in computation was the abacus, and it was thought to have been invented in Babylon circa 2400 BC. Its original style of usage was by lines drawn in sand with pebbles, abaci, of a more modern design, are still used as calculation tools today. This was the first known computer and most advanced system of calculation known to date - preceding Greek methods by 2,000 years. The first recorded idea of using electronics for computing was the 1931 paper The Use of Thyratrons for High Speed Automatic Counting of Physical Phenomena by C. E. Wynn-Williams. Claude Shannons 1938 paper A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits then introduced the idea of using electronics for Boolean algebraic operations, a computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions called a computer program. The program has a form that the computer can use directly to execute the instructions. The same program in its source code form, enables a programmer to study. Because the instructions can be carried out in different types of computers, the execution process carries out the instructions in a computer program. Instructions express the computations performed by the computer and they trigger sequences of simple actions on the executing machine. Those actions produce effects according to the semantics of the instructions, computer software or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provides the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it. Software refers to one or more programs and data held in the storage of the computer for some purposes. In other words, software is a set of programs, procedures, algorithms, program software performs the function of the program it implements, either by directly providing instructions to the computer hardware or by serving as input to another piece of software
2.
Virtual address space
–
In computing, a virtual address space or address space is the set of ranges of virtual addresses that an operating system makes available to a process. This provides several benefits, one of which is, if each process is given an address space. In the following description, the terminology used will be particular to the Windows NT operating system, but the concepts are applicable to other virtual memory operating systems. When a new application on a 32-bit OS is executed, the process has a 4 GiB VAS, initially, none of them have values. Using or setting values in such a VAS would cause a memory exception,0 4GB VAS |----------------------------------------------| Then the applications executable file is mapped into the VAS. Addresses in the process VAS are mapped to bytes in the exe file, the OS manages the mapping,0 4GB VAS |---vvvvvvv------------------------------------| mapping |-----| file bytes app. exe The vs are values from bytes in the mapped file. However, the way the process can use or set - values in its VAS is to ask the OS to map them to bytes from a file. A common way to use VAS memory in this way is to map it to the page file, the other 2GB are used by the operating system. ini file. On 64-bit Microsoft Windows, in a process running an executable that was linked with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE, NO and this applies to both 32- and 64-bit executables.1 and later. Allocating memory via Cs malloc establishes the page file as the store for any new virtual address space. However, a process can also explicitly map file bytes, for x86 CPUs, Linux 32-bit allows to split the user and kernel address ranges in differents ways, 3G/1G user/kernel, 1G/3G user/kernel or 2G/2G user/kernel. Linear address space Advanced Windows by Jeffrey Richter, Microsoft Press
3.
Executable
–
These instructions are traditionally machine code instructions for a physical CPU. Executable code is used to describe sequences of instructions that do not necessarily constitute an executable file, for example. Several object files are linked to create the executable, object files, executable or not, are typically in a container format, such as Executable and Linkable Format. This structures the generated code, for example dividing it into sections such as the. text. data. In order to be executed by the system, a file must conform to the systems Application Binary Interface. For example, in ELF, the point is specified in the header in the e_entry field. In the GCC this field is set by the based on the _start symbol. For C, this is done by linking in the crt0 object, Executable files thus normally contain significant additional machine code beyond that directly generated from the specific source code. In some cases it is desirable to omit this, for example for embedded systems development or simply to understand how compilation, linking, comparison of executable file formats EXE File Format at What Is
4.
Instruction set architecture
–
An ISA includes a specification of the set of opcodes, and the native commands implemented by a particular processor. An instruction set architecture is distinguished from a microarchitecture, which is the set of design techniques used, in a particular processor. Processors with different microarchitectures can share a common instruction set, for example, the Intel Pentium and the AMD Athlon implement nearly identical versions of the x86 instruction set, but have radically different internal designs. The concept of an architecture, distinct from the design of a machine, was developed by Fred Brooks at IBM during the design phase of System/360. Prior to NPL, the companys computer designers had been free to honor cost objectives not only by selecting technologies, the SPREAD compatibility objective, in contrast, postulated a single architecture for a series of five processors spanning a wide range of cost and performance. In addition, these virtual machines execute less frequently used code paths by interpretation, transmeta implemented the x86 instruction set atop VLIW processors in this fashion. A complex instruction set computer has many specialized instructions, some of which may only be used in practical programs. Theoretically important types are the instruction set computer and the one instruction set computer. Another variation is the very long instruction word where the processor receives many instructions encoded and retrieved in one instruction word, machine language is built up from discrete statements or instructions. Examples of operations common to many instruction sets include, Set a register to a constant value. Copy data from a location to a register, or vice versa. Used to store the contents of a register, result of a computation, often called load and store operations. Read and write data from hardware devices, add, subtract, multiply, or divide the values of two registers, placing the result in a register, possibly setting one or more condition codes in a status register. Increment, decrement in some ISAs, saving operand fetch in trivial cases, perform bitwise operations, e. g. taking the conjunction and disjunction of corresponding bits in a pair of registers, taking the negation of each bit in a register. Floating-point instructions for arithmetic on floating-point numbers, branch to another location in the program and execute instructions there. Conditionally branch to another if a certain condition holds. Call another block of code, while saving the location of the instruction as a point to return to. Load/store data to and from a coprocessor, or exchanging with CPU registers, processors may include complex instructions in their instruction set
5.
Memory management
–
Memory management is a form of resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request and this is critical to any advanced computer system where more than a single process might be underway at any time. Several methods have been devised that increase the effectiveness of memory management, the quality of the virtual memory manager can have an extensive effect on overall system performance. Modern general-purpose computer systems manage memory at two levels, operating system level, and application level, application-level memory management is generally categorized as either automatic memory management, usually involving garbage collection, or manual memory management. The task of fulfilling an allocation request consists of locating a block of unused memory of sufficient size, Memory requests are satisfied by allocating portions from a large pool of memory called the heap or free store. At any given time, some parts of the heap are in use, while some are free, the allocators metadata can also inflate the size of small allocations. This is often managed by chunking, the memory management system must track outstanding allocations to ensure that they do not overlap and that no memory is ever lost as a memory leak. The specific dynamic memory allocation algorithm implemented can impact performance significantly, a study conducted in 1994 by Digital Equipment Corporation illustrates the overheads involved for a variety of allocators. The lowest average instruction path length required to allocate a single memory slot was 52, since the precise location of the allocation is not known in advance, the memory is accessed indirectly, usually through a pointer reference. This works well for simple embedded systems where no large objects need to be allocated, however, due to the significantly reduced overhead this method can substantially improve performance for objects that need frequent allocation / de-allocation and is often used in video games. All blocks of a particular size are kept in a linked list or tree. If a smaller size is requested than is available, the smallest available size is selected, one of the resulting parts is selected, and the process repeats until the request is complete. When a block is allocated, the allocator will start with the smallest sufficiently large block to avoid needlessly breaking blocks, when a block is freed, it is compared to its buddy. If they are free, they are combined and placed in the correspondingly larger-sized buddy-block list. Virtual memory is a method of decoupling the memory organization from the physical hardware, the applications operate memory via virtual addresses. Each time an attempt to access stored data is made, virtual memory data orders translate the virtual address to a physical address, in this way addition of virtual memory enables granular control over memory systems and methods of access. In virtual memory systems the system limits how a process can access the memory. Even though the memory allocated for specific processes is normally isolated, shared memory is one of the fastest techniques for inter-process communication
6.
Computer data storage
–
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
.gif){kind=small}
