1.
Video card
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A video card is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display. Frequently, these are advertised as discrete or dedicated graphics cards, Standards such as MDA, CGA, HGC, Tandy, PGC, EGA, VGA, MCGA,8514 or XGA were introduced from 1982 to 1990 and supported by a variety of hardware manufacturers. The majority of video cards are built with either AMD-sourced or Nvidia-sourced graphics chips. Until 2000, 3dfx Interactive was also an important, and often groundbreaking, most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors. Video cards also have sound capabilities to output sound – along with the video for connected TVs or monitors with integrated speakers. Graphics cards werent very useful for computers, since they didnt have the capability to run graphic-based games or high-resolution videos as modern computers do now. Within the industry, video cards are sometimes called graphics add-in-boards, abbreviated as AIBs, as an alternative to the use of a video card, video hardware can be integrated into the motherboard or the CPU. Both approaches can be called integrated graphics, motherboard-based implementations are sometimes called on-board video while CPU-based implementations are known as accelerated processing units. The ability to disable the integrated graphics sometimes also allows the use of a motherboard on which the on-board video has failed. Sometimes both the graphics and a dedicated graphics card can be used simultaneously to feed separate displays. The main advantages of integrated graphics include cost, compactness, simplicity, the performance disadvantage of integrated graphics arises because the graphics processor shares system resources with the CPU. A dedicated graphics card has its own random access memory, its own cooling system, upgrading to a dedicated graphics card offloads work from the CPU and system RAM, so not only will graphics processing be faster, but the computers overall performance may also improve. Both of the dominant CPU makers, AMD and Intel, are moving to APUs, as of late 2013, the best APUs provide graphics processing approaching mid-range mobile video cards and are adequate for casual gaming. Users seeking the highest video performance for gaming or other graphics-intensive uses should still choose computers with dedicated graphics cards. Beyond the enthusiast segment is the market for video cards for workstations used in the special effects industry. Nvidia is a player in the professional segment. As the processing power of cards has increased, so has their demand for electrical power. Current high-performance video cards tend to consume a great deal of power, for example, the thermal design power for the GeForce GTX TITAN is 250 Watts
2.
Video Graphics Array
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Video Graphics Array is the display hardware first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987. Today, the VGA analog interface is used for high definition video, including resolutions of 1080p, while the transmission bandwidth of VGA is high enough to support even higher resolution playback, there can be picture quality degradation depending on cable quality and length. How discernible this degradation is depends on the individuals eyesight and the display, though it is noticeable when switching to. The VGA supports both All Points Addressable graphics modes, and alphanumeric text modes, the other color modes defaulted to standard EGA or CGA compatible palettes, but could still be redefined if desired using VGA-specific programming. g. 400×600 or 360×480, and thin pixels,16 colors and the 70 Hz refresh rate with e. g. 736×410 mode. Its single-chip implementation allowed the VGA to be placed directly on a PC′s motherboard with a minimum of difficulty, since it only required video memory, timing crystals, the original VGA specifications are as follows,256 KB Video RAM 16-color and 256-color paletted display modes. 262, 144-color global palette Selectable 25.175 MHz or 28.322 MHz master pixel clock Usual line rate fixed at 31, compatibility is almost full at BIOS level, but even at register level, a very high value of compatibility is reached. The formula for the VGA horizontal frequency is thus ×525 kHz =4500 ÷143 kHz ≈31.4685 kHz, All other frequencies used by the VGA card are derived from this value by integer multiplication or division. Since the exactness of quartz oscillators is limited, real cards will have higher or lower frequency. All derived VGA timings can be varied widely by software that bypasses the VGA firmware interface and communicates directly with the VGA hardware, the use of other timings may in fact damage such monitors and thus was usually avoided by software publishers. For the most common VGA mode, the timings are. The figures shown in this image may be inaccurate and not match the above table exactly. The same general layout applies, merely at a lower frequency and these timings are the same in the higher frequency mode, but all pixel counts are correspondingly multiplied by 9/8ths – thus,720 active pixels,900 total per line, and a 54 pixel back porch. The monitor is triggered into synchronising at the higher frame rate by use of a positive-polarity VSync pulse. Depending on manufacturer, the details of active period and front/back porch widths, particularly in the horizontal domain. 640×400 @70 Hz is traditionally the video used for booting most VGA-compatible x86 personal computers which show a graphical boot screen. 640×480 @60 Hz is the default Windows graphics mode, up to Windows 2000 and it remains an option in XP and later versions via the boot menu low resolution video option and per-application compatibility mode settings. 320×200 @70 Hz is the most common mode for VGA-era PC games, using exactly the same timings as the 640×400 mode, the actual timings vary slightly from the defined standard
3.
Graphics display resolution
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The graphics display resolution is the width and height dimensions of an electronic visual display device, such as a computer monitor, in pixels. Certain combinations of width and height are standardized and typically given a name, a higher display resolution in a display of the same size means that displayed content appears sharper. The favored aspect ratio of mass market display industry products has changed gradually from 4,3, then to 16,10, and then to 16,9, the 4,3 aspect ratio generally reflects older products, especially the era of the cathode ray tube. The 16,10 aspect ratio had its largest use in the 1995–2010 period, and the 16,9 aspect ratio tends to reflect post-2010 mass market computer monitor, laptop, and entertainment products displays. The 4,3 aspect ratio was common in older cathode ray tube displays. The 16,10 ratio allowed some compromise between showing older 4,3 aspect ratio broadcast TV shows, but also allowing better viewing of widescreen movies. However, around the year 2005, entertainment industry displays gradually moved from 16,10 to the 16,9 aspect ratio, by about 2007, virtually all mass market entertainment displays were 16,9. In 2011, 1920×1080 was the resolution in the most heavily marketed entertainment market displays. The next standard, 3840×2160 emerged on the market in 2013, also in 2013, displays with 2560×1080 appeared, which closely approximate the common CinemaScope movie standard aspect ratio of 2. 35–2.40. In 2014,21,9 screens with pixel dimensions of 3440×1440 became available as well, in this time frame, with the notable exception of Apple, almost all desktop, laptop, and display manufacturers gradually moved to promoting only 16,9 aspect ratio displays. By 2011, the 16,10 aspect ratio had virtually disappeared from the Windows laptop display market, one consequence of this transition was that the highest available resolutions moved generally downward. NHD is a resolution of 640×360 pixels, which is exactly one ninth of a Full HD frame. Pixel doubling nHD frames will form one 720p frame and pixel tripling nHD frames will form one 1080p frame, one drawback of this resolution is that the vertical resolution is not an even multiple of 16, which is a common macroblock size for video codecs. Video frames encoded with 16×16 pixel macroblocks would be padded to 640×368, H.264 codecs have this padding and cropping ability built-in as standard. The same is true for qHD and 1080p but the amount of padding is more for lower resolutions such as nHD. To avoid storing the eight lines of padded pixels, some prefer to encode video at 624×352. When such video streams are encoded from HD frames or played back on HD displays in full screen mode they are scaled by non-integer scale factors. True nHD frames on the hand has integer scale factors
4.
IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
5.
Computer display standard
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Computer display standards are a combination of aspect ratio, display size, display resolution, color depth, and refresh rate. They are associated with expansion cards, video connectors and monitors. Various computer display standards or display modes have been used in the history of the personal computer and they are often a combination of aspect ratio, display resolution, color depth, and refresh rate. Associated with the resolution and refresh rate is a display adapter. Earlier display adapters were simple frame-buffers, but later display standards also specified a more set of display functions. Beyond display modes, the VESA industry organization has defined several standards related to management and device identification. A number of common resolutions have been used with computers descended from the original IBM PC, some of these are now supported by other families of personal computers. Video standards associated with IBM-PC-descended personal computers are shown in the diagram and table below, alongside those of early Macintosh, although the common standard prefixes super and ultra do not indicate specific modifiers to base standard resolutions, several others do, Quarter A quarter of the base resolution. QVGA, a term for a 320x240 resolution, half the width and height of VGA, the Q prefix usually indicates Quad in higher resolutions, and sometimes q is used instead of Q to specify quarter, but this usage is not consistent. Quad Four times as many compared to the base resolution. Hex Sixteen times as many compared to the base resolution. Given the use of X in XGA, it is not often used as an additional modifier unless its meaning would be unambiguous, display resolution, this also lists the display resolutions of standard and HD televisions, which are sometimes used as computer monitors.3 or later. Large image of graphic card history tree
6.
Display resolution
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The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It is usually quoted as width × height, with the units in pixels, for example,1024 ×768 means the width is 1024 pixels and this example would normally be spoken as ten twenty-four by seven sixty-eight or ten twenty-four by seven six eight. A consequence of having a display is that, for multi-format video inputs. Note that for broadcast television standards the use of the word here is a misnomer. In digital measurement, the resolution would be given in pixels per inch. In analog measurement, if the screen is 10 inches high, in the case of television inputs, many manufacturers will take the input and zoom it out to overscan the display by as much as 5% so input resolution is not necessarily display resolution. The eyes perception of display resolution can be affected by a number of factors – see image resolution, one factor is the display screens rectangular shape, which is expressed as the ratio of the physical picture width to the physical picture height. This is known as the aspect ratio, a screens physical aspect ratio and the individual pixels aspect ratio may not necessarily be the same. An array of 1280 ×720 on a 16,9 display has square pixels, an example of pixel shape affecting resolution or perceived sharpness, displaying more information in a smaller area using a higher resolution makes the image much clearer or sharper. Most television display manufacturers overscan the pictures on their displays, so that the effective on-screen picture may be reduced from 720 ×576 to 680 ×550, the size of the invisible area somewhat depends on the display device. HD televisions do this as well, to a similar extent, Computer displays including projectors generally do not overscan although many models allow it. CRT displays tend to be underscanned in stock configurations, to compensate for the distortions at the corners. As of July 2002,1024 ×768 eXtended Graphics Array was the most common display resolution, many web sites and multimedia products were re-designed from the previous 800 ×600 format to the layouts optimized for 1024 ×768. The availability of inexpensive LCD monitors has made the 5,4 aspect ratio resolution of 1280 ×1024 more popular for desktop usage during the first decade of the 21st century. Many computer users including CAD users, graphic artists and video game players ran their computers at 1600 ×1200 resolution or higher such as 2048 ×1536 QXGA if they had the necessary equipment. A new more-than-HD resolution of 2560 ×1600 WQXGA was released in 30-inch LCD monitors in 2007, as of March 2012,1366 ×768 was the most common display resolution. In 2010, 27-inch LCD monitors with the 2560 × 1440-pixel resolution were released by manufacturers including Apple. Panels for professional environments, such as use and air traffic control
7.
Pixel
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The address of a pixel corresponds to its physical coordinates. LCD pixels are manufactured in a grid, and are often represented using dots or squares. Each pixel is a sample of an image, more samples typically provide more accurate representations of the original. The intensity of each pixel is variable, in color imaging systems, a color is typically represented by three or four component intensities such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The word pixel is based on a contraction of pix and el, the word pixel was first published in 1965 by Frederic C. Billingsley of JPL, to describe the elements of video images from space probes to the Moon. Billingsley had learned the word from Keith E. McFarland, at the Link Division of General Precision in Palo Alto, McFarland said simply it was in use at the time. The word is a combination of pix, for picture, the word pix appeared in Variety magazine headlines in 1932, as an abbreviation for the word pictures, in reference to movies. By 1938, pix was being used in reference to pictures by photojournalists. The concept of a picture element dates to the earliest days of television, some authors explain pixel as picture cell, as early as 1972. In graphics and in image and video processing, pel is often used instead of pixel, for example, IBM used it in their Technical Reference for the original PC. A pixel is generally thought of as the smallest single component of a digital image, however, the definition is highly context-sensitive. For example, there can be printed pixels in a page, or pixels carried by electronic signals, or represented by digital values, or pixels on a display device, or pixels in a digital camera. This list is not exhaustive and, depending on context, synonyms include pel, sample, byte, bit, dot, Pixels can be used as a unit of measure such as,2400 pixels per inch,640 pixels per line, or spaced 10 pixels apart. For example, a high-quality photographic image may be printed with 600 ppi on a 1200 dpi inkjet printer, even higher dpi numbers, such as the 4800 dpi quoted by printer manufacturers since 2002, do not mean much in terms of achievable resolution. The more pixels used to represent an image, the closer the result can resemble the original, the number of pixels in an image is sometimes called the resolution, though resolution has a more specific definition.3 megapixels. The pixels, or color samples, that form an image may or may not be in one-to-one correspondence with screen pixels. In computing, a composed of pixels is known as a bitmapped image or a raster image
8.
Hertz
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The hertz is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units and is defined as one cycle per second. It is named for Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, the first person to provide proof of the existence of electromagnetic waves. Hertz are commonly expressed in SI multiples kilohertz, megahertz, gigahertz, kilo means thousand, mega meaning million, giga meaning billion and tera for trillion. Some of the units most common uses are in the description of waves and musical tones, particularly those used in radio-. It is also used to describe the speeds at which computers, the hertz is equivalent to cycles per second, i. e. 1/second or s −1. In English, hertz is also used as the plural form, as an SI unit, Hz can be prefixed, commonly used multiples are kHz, MHz, GHz and THz. One hertz simply means one cycle per second,100 Hz means one hundred cycles per second, and so on. The unit may be applied to any periodic event—for example, a clock might be said to tick at 1 Hz, the rate of aperiodic or stochastic events occur is expressed in reciprocal second or inverse second in general or, the specific case of radioactive decay, becquerels. Whereas 1 Hz is 1 cycle per second,1 Bq is 1 aperiodic radionuclide event per second, the conversion between a frequency f measured in hertz and an angular velocity ω measured in radians per second is ω =2 π f and f = ω2 π. This SI unit is named after Heinrich Hertz, as with every International System of Units unit named for a person, the first letter of its symbol is upper case. Note that degree Celsius conforms to this rule because the d is lowercase. — Based on The International System of Units, the hertz is named after the German physicist Heinrich Hertz, who made important scientific contributions to the study of electromagnetism. The name was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 1930, the term cycles per second was largely replaced by hertz by the 1970s. One hobby magazine, Electronics Illustrated, declared their intention to stick with the traditional kc. Mc. etc. units, sound is a traveling longitudinal wave which is an oscillation of pressure. Humans perceive frequency of waves as pitch. Each musical note corresponds to a frequency which can be measured in hertz. An infants ear is able to perceive frequencies ranging from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, the range of ultrasound, infrasound and other physical vibrations such as molecular and atomic vibrations extends from a few femtoHz into the terahertz range and beyond. Electromagnetic radiation is described by its frequency—the number of oscillations of the perpendicular electric and magnetic fields per second—expressed in hertz. Radio frequency radiation is measured in kilohertz, megahertz, or gigahertz
9.
Interlaced video
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Interlaced video is a technique for doubling the perceived frame rate of a video display without consuming extra bandwidth. The interlaced signal contains two fields of a video frame captured at two different times and this enhances motion perception to the viewer, and reduces flicker by taking advantage of the phi phenomenon. This effectively doubles the resolution as compared to non-interlaced footage. Interlaced signals require a display that is capable of showing the individual fields in a sequential order. CRT displays and ALiS plasma displays are made for displaying interlaced signals, Interlaced scan refers to one of two common methods for painting a video image on an electronic display screen by scanning or displaying each line or row of pixels. This technique uses two fields to create a frame, one field contains all odd-numbered lines in the image, the other contains all even-numbered lines. A Phase Alternating Line -based television set display, for example, the two sets of 25 fields work together to create a full frame every 1/25 of a second, but with interlacing create a new half frame every 1/50 of a second. To display interlaced video on progressive displays, playback applies deinterlacing to the video signal. The European Broadcasting Union has argued against interlaced video in production and they recommend 720p 50 fps for the current production format—and are working with the industry to introduce 1080p 50 as a future-proof production standard. 1080p 50 offers higher vertical resolution, better quality at lower bitrates, despite arguments against it, television standards organizations continue to support interlacing. It is still included in digital video formats such as DV, DVB. Progressive scan captures, transmits, and displays an image in a similar to text on a page—line by line. The interlaced scan pattern in a CRT display also completes such a scan, the first pass displays the first and all odd numbered lines, from the top left corner to the bottom right corner. The second pass displays the second and all even numbered lines and this scan of alternate lines is called interlacing. A field is an image that contains only half of the lines needed to make a complete picture, persistence of vision makes the eye perceive the two fields as a continuous image. In the days of CRT displays, the afterglow of the displays phosphor aided this effect, interlacing provides full vertical detail with the same bandwidth that would be required for a full progressive scan of twice the perceived frame rate and refresh rate. To prevent flicker, all analog broadcast television systems used interlacing, format identifiers like 576i 50 and 720p 50 specify the frame rate for progressive scan formats, but for interlaced formats they typically specify the field rate. This can lead to confusion, because industry-standard SMPTE timecode formats always deal with frame rate, not field rate
10.
Graphics processing unit
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GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present on a video card, the term GPU was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as the worlds first GPU, or Graphics Processing Unit. It was presented as a processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping. Rival ATI Technologies coined the visual processing unit or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700 in 2002. Arcade system boards have been using specialized graphics chips since the 1970s, in early video game hardware, the RAM for frame buffers was expensive, so video chips composited data together as the display was being scanned out on the monitor. Fujitsus MB14241 video shifter was used to accelerate the drawing of sprite graphics for various 1970s arcade games from Taito and Midway, such as Gun Fight, Sea Wolf, the Namco Galaxian arcade system in 1979 used specialized graphics hardware supporting RGB color, multi-colored sprites and tilemap backgrounds. The Galaxian hardware was used during the golden age of arcade video games, by game companies such as Namco, Centuri, Gremlin, Irem, Konami, Midway, Nichibutsu, Sega. In the home market, the Atari 2600 in 1977 used a video shifter called the Television Interface Adaptor,6502 machine code subroutines could be triggered on scan lines by setting a bit on a display list instruction. ANTIC also supported smooth vertical and horizontal scrolling independent of the CPU and it became one of the best known of what were known as graphics processing units in the 1980s. The Williams Electronics arcade games Robotron,2084, Joust, Sinistar, in 1985, the Commodore Amiga featured a custom graphics chip, with a blitter unit accelerating bitmap manipulation, line draw, and area fill functions. Also included is a coprocessor with its own instruction set, capable of manipulating graphics hardware registers in sync with the video beam. In 1986, Texas Instruments released the TMS34010, the first microprocessor with on-chip graphics capabilities and it could run general-purpose code, but it had a very graphics-oriented instruction set. In 1990-1992, this chip would become the basis of the Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture Windows accelerator cards, in 1987, the IBM8514 graphics system was released as one of the first video cards for IBM PC compatibles to implement fixed-function 2D primitives in electronic hardware. Fujitsu later competed with the FM Towns computer, released in 1989 with support for a full 16,777,216 color palette, in 1988, the first dedicated polygonal 3D graphics boards were introduced in arcades with the Namco System 21 and Taito Air System. In 1991, S3 Graphics introduced the S3 86C911, which its designers named after the Porsche 911 as an implication of the performance increase it promised. The 86C911 spawned a host of imitators, by 1995, all major PC graphics chip makers had added 2D acceleration support to their chips. By this time, fixed-function Windows accelerators had surpassed expensive general-purpose graphics coprocessors in Windows performance, throughout the 1990s, 2D GUI acceleration continued to evolve. As manufacturing capabilities improved, so did the level of integration of graphics chips, arcade systems such as the Sega Model 2 and Namco Magic Edge Hornet Simulator in 1993 were capable of hardware T&L years before appearing in consumer graphics cards
