1.
Xbox (console)
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The Xbox is a home video game console and the first installment in the Xbox series of consoles manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15,2001, in North America, followed by Australia, Europe and it was Microsofts first foray into the gaming console market. The sixth-generation console competed with Sonys PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo GameCube and it was also the first console produced by an American company since the Atari Jaguar ceased production in 1996. Announced in 2000, The Xbox, graphically powerful compared to its rivals and it was also noted for its PC-like size and weight, and was the first console to feature a built-in hard disk. In November 2002, Microsoft launched Xbox Live, an online gaming service that enabled subscribers to download new content. Unlike other online services from Sega and Sony, Xbox Live had support in the console design through an integrated Ethernet port. The service gave Microsoft an early foothold in online gaming and would help the Xbox become a relevant competitor to other sixth-generation consoles, the popularity of blockbuster titles such as Halo 2 contributed to the popularity of online console gaming, and in particular first-person shooters. Despite this and being in position, ahead of Nintendos GameCube. Xboxs successor, the Xbox 360, was launched in November 2005, the Xbox was soon discontinued beginning with Microsofts worst-performing market, Japan, in 2005. Other countries would follow suit in 2006, the last Xbox game in Europe was Xiaolin Showdown released in June 2007, and the last game in North America was Madden NFL09 released in August 2008. Support for out-of-warranty Xbox consoles was discontinued on March 2,2009, support for Xbox Live on the console ended on April 15,2010. The team hoped to create a console to compete with Sonys upcoming PlayStation 2, the team approached Ed Fries, the leader of Microsofts game publishing business at the time, and pitched their DirectX Box console based on the DirectX graphics technology developed by Berkes team. Fries decided to support the idea of creating a Windows DirectX based console. During development, the original DirectXbox name was shortened to Xbox, Microsofts marketing department did not like the Xbox name, and suggested many alternatives. During focus testing, the Xbox name was left on the list of names to demonstrate how unpopular the Xbox name would be with consumers. However, consumer testing revealed that Xbox was preferred by far over the suggested names. It was Microsofts first video game console after collaborating with Sega to port Windows CE to the Dreamcast console, Microsoft repeatedly delayed the console, which was first mentioned publicly in late 1999 during interviews with Microsofts then-CEO Bill Gates. Gates stated that “we want Xbox to be the platform of choice for the best and most creative game developers in the world. ”The Xbox was officially announced at the Game Developers Conference on March 10,2000, audiences were impressed by the consoles technology
2.
Kinect
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Kinect is a line of motion sensing input devices by Microsoft for Xbox 360 and Xbox One video game consoles and Windows PCs. The first-generation Kinect was first introduced in November 2010 in an attempt to broaden Xbox 360s audience beyond its typical gamer base, a version for Windows was released on February 1,2012. A newer version, Kinect 2.0, was released with the Xbox One platform starting in 2013, Microsoft released the first Beta of the Kinect software development kit for Windows 7 on June 16,2011. This SDK was meant to allow developers to write Kinecting apps in C++/CLI, C#, Kinect was first announced on June 1,2009 at E32009 under the code name Project Natal. Three demos were shown to showcase Kinect when it was revealed at Microsofts E32009 Media Briefing, Ricochet, Paint Party, a demo based on Burnout Paradise was also shown outside of Microsofts media briefing. The skeletal mapping technology shown at E32009 was capable of simultaneously tracking four people and it was rumored that the launch of Project Natal would be accompanied with the release of a new Xbox 360 console. Microsoft dismissed the reports in public and repeatedly emphasized that Project Natal would be compatible with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft indicated that the company considers it to be a significant initiative, as fundamental to Xbox brand as Xbox Live, Kinect was even referred to as a new Xbox by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a speech for Executives Club of Chicago. During Kinects development, project team members experimentally adapted numerous games to Kinect-based control schemes to help evaluate usability, among these games were Beautiful Katamari and Space Invaders Extreme, which were demonstrated at Tokyo Game Show in September 2009. Instead, processing would be handled by one of the cores of Xbox 360s Xenon CPU. According to Alex Kipman, Kinect system consumes about 10-15% of Xbox 360s computing resources, on March 25,2010, Microsoft sent out a save the date flier for an event called the World Premiere Project Natal for Xbox 360 Experience at E32010. The event took place on the evening of Sunday, June 13,2010 at Galen Center and it was announced that the system would officially be called Kinect, a portmanteau of the words kinetic and connect, which describe key aspects of the initiative. Microsoft also announced that the North American launch date for Kinect will be November 4,2010, in addition, on July 20,2010, Microsoft announced a Kinect bundle with a redesigned Xbox 360, to be available with Kinect launch. On June 16,2011, Microsoft announced its release of its SDK for non-commercial use. Previously, all Kinect sensors had been glossy black, on October 31,2011, Microsoft announced launching of the commercial version of Kinect for Windows program with release of SDK to companies. David Dennis, Product Manager at Microsoft, said, There are hundreds of organizations we are working with to help them determine whats possible with the tech. On February 1,2012, Microsoft released the version of Kinect for Windows SDK. The tabloid the New York Post claimed Microsoft had a $500 million budget for advertising the launch of Kinect, on October 19, Microsoft advertised Kinect on The Oprah Winfrey Show by giving free Xbox 360 consoles and Kinect sensors to the people in the audience
3.
Microsoft
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Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup, as of 2016, it was the worlds largest software maker by revenue, and one of the worlds most valuable companies. Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4,1975, to develop and it rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The companys 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion, in June 2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer production market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers. The word Microsoft is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion for computer programming, sought to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which offered a computer that tracked and analyzed automobile traffic data. Allen went on to pursue a degree in science at Washington State University. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systemss Altair 8800 microcomputer, Allen suggested that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device, after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didnt actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter and they officially established Microsoft on April 4,1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the name of Micro-Soft, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, the company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, however, it was MS-DOS that solidified the companys dominance. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOSs available software selection, the company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkins disease, while jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20,1985. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated, in 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office
4.
Flextronics
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Flex Ltd. is an American multinational technological manufacturer. It is the second largest global electronics manufacturing services, original design manufacturer company by revenue, Flex is headquartered in Singapore and has manufacturing operations in over 40 countries, totaling approximately 200,000 employees. In 1969, the company was founded in Silicon Valley as Flextronics, in 1980, the company was sold to Bob Todd, Joe Sullivan and Jack Watts. In 1981, Flextronics became a publicly held company, in 1990, the company returned to being a private company in a leveraged buyout and was renamed as Flextronics International, Ltd. with Singapore as its new base. In 1993, the company received venture capital funding through Sequoia Capital, the company closed its contract electronic manufacturing plant in Richardson, Texas in 1996. The company acquired two companies in Hong Kong, Astron Group and FICO Plastics Ltd. and a Swedish-based company, in 2000, the company ranked third on 100 Best-Managed Companies by IndustryWeek. In 2005, the company purchased the division of Nortel Networks. In 2006 Flextronics took over a part of the production of Lego, on June 4,2007, Flextronics offered to purchase Solectron for US$3.6 billion and thus making Solectron a subsidiary of Flextronics. The acquisition of Solectron was completed by end of October 2007, on March 18,2009, Flextronics was invited to ring the NASDAQ stock market opening bell, signifying the day’s start of trading and celebrated 15-year NASDAQ-listed anniversary. Mike McNamara and a group of top executives represented the company at the ringing of the bell, on September 2,2009, Flextronics announced that Multek received Danaher Test and Measurements 2009 Outstanding Supplier Award. The award was based on quality, delivery performance, engineering support. In 2010, the signed an agreement with Lenovo to provide manufacturing for Europe. That same year, Flextronics also signed an agreement with Brammo to provide acquisition and manufacturing in North America, Asia, in 2012, Flextronics incubated Elementum, a start-up supply chain management company based in Mountain View, California. In 2014, Elementum was spun off from Flextronics as its own separate entity, in 2014, Flextronics was named as the manufacturer of the Fitbit Force by the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in the context of a recall of the product due to rashes developing on the wrists of its users. In July 2015 the company announced that it change the company name from Flextronics to just Flex. In November 2015, Flex, acquired Wink smart home platform to bring the Intelligence of Things Home, the 17,000 square feet facility will employ 25 people and be located in a former military storehouse in the Seaport, now called the Innovation and Design Building. In 2013, Flextronics launched Lab IX, a program based out of Milpitas
5.
Foxconn
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Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd. trading as Foxconn Technology Group, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturing company headquartered in New Taipei City, Taiwan. Foxconn is the worlds largest contract manufacturer, and the third-largest information technology company by revenue. Foxconn is primarily a manufacturer, its clients include major American, Canadian, Finnish. Notable customers and products the company manufactures include BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Kindle, Nintendo 3DS, Nokia, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Foxconn has been involved in several controversies relating to how it manages employees in China. There has been a history of suicides at its factories blamed on working conditions, in January 2012, about 150 Foxconn employees threatened to commit mass-suicide in protest of their working conditions. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd. was founded in 1974 by Terry Gou as a manufacturer of electrical components, Foxconn was originally a trade name of Hon Hai, and a subsidiary later received the name. Hon Hais first manufacturing plant in mainland China opened in Longhua Town, Shenzhen, in 2001, Intel switched its manufacture of Intel-branded motherboards from Asus to Foxconn. In November 2007, Foxconn announced plans to build a new US$500 million plant in Huizhou, in January 2012, Foxconn named Tien Chong Cheng chief executive, he soon resigned, citing health problems. In September 2012, Foxconn announced plans to invest US$494 million in the construction of five new factories in Itu, Brazil, in 2014, the company purchased Asia Pacific Telecom as well as winning at auction some spectrum licenses allowing it to operate 4G telecommunications equipment in Taiwan. On February 25,2016, Sharp accepted the ¥700 billion takeover bid from Foxconn that acquires over 66 percent of Sharps voting stock, however, hours later the deal was put on hold after contingent liabilities. Worth perhaps billions of dollars. came to light, a joint press statement released on 30 March 2016 finalised the deal but at a price significantly lower than a month earlier. In 2016, Foxconn, together with Tencent and luxury-car dealer Harmony New Energy Auto founded Future Mobility, Foxconn has factories in Asia, Brazil, Europe, and Mexico that, as of 2012, together comprise approximately 40 percent of all consumer electronics products sold. Foxconn has 12 factories in nine Chinese cities—more than in any other country, another of Foxconns factory cities is Zhengzhou Technology Park in Zhengzhou, Henan province, where a reported 120,000 workers are employed as of 2012. Foxconn continues to expand, and planned factories include sites at Wuhan in Hubei province, Haizhow, Kunshan in Jiangsu province, Tianjin, Beijing, and Guangzhou in Guangdong province, China. On May 25,2016, the BBC reported that Foxconn fired 60,000 employees because it had automated many of the tasks associated with our operations. The company is considering more investments in Brazil, Foxconn has factories in Hungary, Slovakia, Turkey and the Czech Republic. Foxconn factories are located in Europe to ensure rapid fulfillment for its customers. It is the second-largest exporter in the Czech Republic, Foxconn has had operational units since 2006 in the Special Economic Zone of Chennai, Tamil Nadu
6.
Xbox
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Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. It represents a series of game consoles developed by Microsoft. The brand also represents applications, streaming services, and a service by the name of Xbox Live. The brand was first introduced on November 15,2001 in the United States and that original device was the first video game console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. It reached over 24 million units sold as of May 10,2006, Microsofts second console, the Xbox 360, was released in 2005 and has sold over 77.2 million consoles worldwide as of April 18,2013. The successor to the Xbox 360 and Microsofts most recent console, the Xbox One has been released in 21 markets in total, with a Chinese release on September 29,2014. The head of Xbox is Phil Spencer, who succeeded former head Marc Whitten in late March 2014. The original Xbox was released on November 15,2001, in North America, February 22,2002, in Japan and it was Microsofts first foray into the gaming console market. As part of the sixth-generation of gaming, the Xbox competed with Sonys PlayStation 2, Segas Dreamcast, the Xbox was the first console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. The name Xbox was derived from a contraction of DirectX Box, the integrated Xbox Live service launched in November 2002 allowed players to play games online with or without a broadband connection. It first competed with Dreamcasts online service but later competed with PlayStation 2s online service. The Xbox 360 was released as the successor of the original Xbox in November 2005, competing with Sonys PlayStation 3, as of June 30,2013,78.2 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide. The Xbox 360 was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12,2005, with detailed launch, the console sold out completely upon release in all regions except in Japan. Microsoft also released Kinect, a control system for the Xbox 360 which uses an advanced sensor system. At their E3 presentation on June 14,2010, Microsoft announced a redesigned Xbox 360 that would ship on the same day, older models of the Xbox 360 have since been discontinued. The first new console to be released features a 250 GB hard drive, the Xbox One was released on November 22,2013 in North America, as the successor of the Xbox 360. The Xbox One competes with Sonys PlayStation 4 and Nintendos Wii U as part of the generation of video game consoles. After an overwhelmingly negative response from critics and consumers, Microsoft announced that these restrictions would be dropped, as a gesture toward showing a commitment to user privacy, Microsoft decided to allow the console to function without Kinect
7.
Home video game console
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A home video game console or simply home console is a video game device that is primarily used for home gamers, as opposed to in arcades or some other commercial establishment. Below is a timeline of each generation with the top three home video consoles of each based on worldwide sales. For a complete list of video consoles released in each generation please see the respective article of each generation. Legend – Unit with the highest sales of its generation, – Unit with the second highest sales of its generation. – Unit with the third highest sales of its generation, – Manufacturer released a home video console during this generation but did not sell the most units. – – Manufacturer didnt release a video game console during this generation. † – Indicates the current generation consoles on the market, although the first video games appeared in the 1950s, they were played on massive computers connected to vector displays, not analog televisions. Ralph H. Baer conceived the idea of a video game in 1951. In the late 1960s while working for Sanders Associates he created a series of game console designs. In 1972 Magnavox released the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home game console which could be connected to a TV set. Magnavox replaced the switch design with separate cartridges for each game, by autumn 1975, Magnavox, bowing to the popularity of Pong, cancelled the Odyssey and released a scaled-down version that played only Pong and hockey, the Odyssey 100. A second, higher end console, the Odyssey 200, was released with the 100 and added on-screen scoring, up to four players, almost simultaneously released with Ataris own home Pong console through Sears, these consoles jump-started the consumer market. All three of the new consoles used simpler designs than the original Odyssey with no board game pieces or extra cartridges, in the years that followed, the market saw many companies rushing similar consoles to market. Most of the consoles from this era were dedicated consoles playing the games that came with the console. These video game consoles were often just called video games, because there was reason to distinguish the two yet. While a few companies like Atari, Magnavox, and newcomer Coleco pushed the envelope, Fairchild released the Fairchild Video Entertainment System in 1976. The VES, however, contained a programmable microprocessor so its cartridges only needed a single ROM chip to store microprocessor instructions, RCA and Atari soon released their own cartridge-based consoles, the RCA Studio II and the Atari 2600, respectively. Both Bally and Magnavox also brought their own programmable cartridge-based consoles to the market, however, it was not until Atari released a conversion of the golden age arcade hit Space Invaders in 1980 for the Atari 2600 that the home console industry took off
8.
Eighth generation of video game consoles
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In the history of video games, the seventh generation includes consoles released since late 2005 by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony Computer Entertainment. The eighth generation began in November 2012, each new console introduced a new type of breakthrough in technology. Some of the Wii controllers could be moved about to control in-game actions, Video game consoles had become an important part of the global IT infrastructure. It is estimated that video game consoles represented 25% of the worlds general-purpose computational power in the year 2007, joining Nintendo in the motion market, Sony Computer Entertainment released the PlayStation Move in September 2010. The PlayStation Move features motion sensing gaming, similar to that of the Wii, Microsoft joined the scene in November 2010, with its Kinect. Unlike the other two systems, Kinect does not use controllers of any sort and makes the users the controller, having sold 8 million units in its first 60 days on the market, Kinect has claimed the Guinness World Record of being the fastest selling consumer electronics device. While the Xbox 360 offers wired as well as wireless controllers as a product, all PlayStation 3 controllers can be used in wired. The Nintendo DS features a screen and built-in microphone. Additionally, the version of the NDS, the Nintendo DSi. The PlayStation Portable released later the year on December 12,2004. It became the first handheld game console to use an optical disc format, Universal Media Disc. Sony also gave the PSP robust multi-media capability, connectivity with the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, other PSPs, as well as Internet connectivity. The Nintendo DS likewise had connectivity to the internet through the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and Nintendo DS Browser, as well as wireless connectivity to other DS systems, a crowdfunded console, the Ouya, received $8.5 million in pre-orders, launching in 2013. Post-launch sales were poor, and the device was a commercial failure, the business was wound down due to financial problems and sold to Razer Inc. Razer discontinued the Ouya in July 2015, the first discontinued seventh generation console was the Wii, which Nintendo announced it would be discontinuing production of on October 2013. Microsoft also announced in 2016 that they would discontinue the Xbox 360 at the end of April that year, once this happens, the seventh generation of video game consoles will end. Nintendo entered this generation with a new approach embodied by its Wii and this approach was previously implemented in the portable market with the Nintendo DS. This strategy paid off, with demand for the Wii outstripping supply throughout 2007. Since Nintendo profited on each console right from the start unlike its competitors, as in previous generations, Nintendo provided strong support for its new console with popular first-party franchises like Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Pokémon, among others
9.
North America
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North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16. 5% of the land area. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 565 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7. 5% of the worlds population, North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago, the Classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era ended with the migrations and the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect different kind of interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants, European influences are strongest in the northern parts of the continent while indigenous and African influences are relatively stronger in the south. Because of the history of colonialism, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, the Americas are usually accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass previously unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a map, in which he placed the word America on the continent of South America. He explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio, for Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespuccis name, but in its feminine form America, following the examples of Europa, Asia and Africa. Later, other mapmakers extended the name America to the continent, In 1538. Some argue that the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries except in the case of royalty, a minutely explored belief that has been advanced is that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of Amairick. Another is that the name is rooted in a Native American language, the term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with location and context. In Canadian English, North America may be used to refer to the United States, alternatively, usage sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands
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Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
11.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
12.
Brazil
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Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological systems. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a state governed under a constitutional monarchy. The ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, the country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup détat. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, Brazils current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states, Brazils economy is the worlds ninth-largest by nominal GDP and seventh-largest by GDP as of 2015. A member of the BRICS group, Brazil until 2010 had one of the worlds fastest growing economies, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition. Brazils national development bank plays an important role for the economic growth. Brazil is a member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Unasul, Mercosul, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, CPLP. Brazil is a power in Latin America and a middle power in international affairs. One of the worlds major breadbaskets, Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and it is likely that the word Brazil comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology red like an ember, formed from Latin brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name, early sailors sometimes also called it the Land of Parrots. In the Guarani language, a language of Paraguay, Brazil is called Pindorama
13.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
14.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
15.
Japanese yen
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The yen is the official currency of Japan. It is the third most traded currency in the exchange market after the United States dollar. It is also used as a reserve currency after the U. S. dollar, the euro. Before the Meiji Restoration, Japans feudal fiefs all issued their own money, hansatsu, in an array of incompatible denominations. The New Currency Act of 1871 did away with these and established the yen, the former han became prefectures and their mints private chartered banks, which initially retained the right to print money. To bring an end to this situation the Bank of Japan was founded in 1882, following World War II the yen lost much of its prewar value. To stabilize the Japanese economy the exchange rate of the yen was fixed at ¥360 per $1 as part of the Bretton Woods system, when that system was abandoned in 1971, the yen became undervalued and was allowed to float. The yen had appreciated to a peak of ¥271 per $1 in 1973, then underwent periods of depreciation and appreciation due to the 1973 oil crisis, arriving at a value of ¥227 per $1 by 1980. Since 1973, the Japanese government has maintained a policy of intervention. The Japanese government focuses on an export market, and tries to ensure a low yen value through a trade surplus. Since that time, however, the yen has greatly decreased in value, the Bank of Japan maintains a policy of zero to near-zero interest rates and the Japanese government has an extreme anti-inflation policy. Yen derives from the Japanese word 圓, which is cognate with the Chinese yuan, originally, the Chinese had traded silver in mass called sycees and when Spanish and Mexican silver coins arrived, the Chinese called them silver rounds for their circular shapes. The coins and the name appeared in Japan. While the Chinese eventually replaced 圓 with 元, the Japanese continued to use the same word, the spelling and pronunciation yen is standard in English. This is because mainly English speakers who visited Japan at the end of the Edo period to the early Meiji period spelled words this way, ゑん /wen/ in historical kana orthography. In the 16th century, Japanese /e/ and /we/ both had been pronounced and Portuguese missionaries had spelled them ye, some time thereafter, by the middle of the 18th century, /e/ and /we/ came to be pronounced as in modern Japanese, although some regions retain the pronunciation. In the early Meiji era, James Curtis Hepburn, following Medhurst, spelled all es as ye in his A Japanese and that was the first full-scale Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary, which had a strong influence on Westerners in Japan and probably prompted the spelling yen. Hepburn revised most of yes to e in the 3rd edition in order to mirror the contemporary pronunciation and this was probably already fixed and has remained so ever since
16.
Renminbi
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The renminbi /ˌrɛnmɪnˈbiː/ is the official currency of the Peoples Republic of China. The yuan is the unit of the renminbi, but is also used to refer to the Chinese currency in general. The distinction between the terms renminbi and yuan is similar to that between sterling and pound, which refer to the British currency and its primary unit. One yuan is subdivided into 10 jiao, and a jiao in turn is subdivided into 10 fen, the ISO code for renminbi is CNY, or also CNH when traded in off-shore markets such as Hong Kong. The currency is often abbreviated RMB, or indicated by the yuan sign ¥, in Chinese texts the currency may also be indicated with the Chinese character for the yuan, 圆. The renminbi is legal tender in mainland China, but not in Hong Kong or Macau, renminbi is sometimes accepted in Hong Kong and Macau, and are easily exchanged in the two territories, with banks in Hong Kong allowing people to maintain accounts in RMB. The currency is issued by the Peoples Bank of China, the authority of China. Until 2005, the value of the renminbi was pegged to the US dollar and it has previously been claimed that the renminbis official exchange rate was undervalued by as much as 37. 5% against its purchasing power parity. Since 2006, the exchange rate has been allowed to float in a narrow margin around a fixed base rate determined with reference to a basket of world currencies. The Chinese government has announced that it gradually increase the flexibility of the exchange rate. As a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi, it became the worlds 8th most traded currency in 2013, and 5th in 2015. On 1 October 2016, the RMB became the first emerging market currency to be included in the IMFs special drawing rights basket, a variety of currencies circulated in China during the Republic of China era, most of which were denominated in the unit yuán. Each was distinguished by a name, such as the fabi, the gold yuan. During the era of the economy, the value of the renminbi was set to unrealistic values in exchange with western currency. The unrealistic levels at which exchange rates were pegged led to a black market in currency transactions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, China worked to make the RMB more convertible, through the use of swap centres, the exchange rate was brought to realistic levels and the dual track currency system was abolished. As of 2013, the renminbi is convertible on current accounts, the ultimate goal has been to make the RMB fully convertible. From 1949 until the late 1970s, the state fixed Chinas exchange rate at a highly overvalued level as part of the countrys import -substitution strategy
17.
Ultra HD Blu-ray
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Ultra HD Blu-ray is a digital optical disc data storage format that supersedes Blu-ray. Ultra HD Blu-ray discs are incompatible with existing Blu-ray players, Ultra HD Blu-ray supports 4K UHD video at frame rates up to 60 frames per second, encoded using High Efficiency Video Coding. The discs support both high dynamic range by increasing the depth to 10-bit per color and a greater color gamut than supported by conventional Blu-ray video by using the Rec.2020 color space. The specification allows for three disc sizes, each with their own rate,50 GB with 82 Mbit/s,66 GB with 108 Mbit/s. Ultra HD Blu-ray technology was licensed in mid 2015, and players had a release date of Christmas 2015. Ultra HD Blu-ray uses a new revision of AACS DRM, AACS2, on May 12,2015, the Blu-ray Disc Association revealed completed specifications and the official Ultra HD Blu-ray logo. Unlike conventional DVDs and Blu-rays, the new 4K format does not have region coding, on March 1,2016, the BDA released Ultra HD Blu-ray with mandatory support for HDR10 Media Profile video and optional support for Dolby Vision. The first Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray Discs were officially released from four studios on March 1,2016 and these were Sony, Lionsgate, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox
18.
Blu-ray
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Blu-ray or Blu-ray Disc is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was designed to supersede the DVD format, in that it is capable of storing high-definition, the plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Conventional Blu-ray Disc discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the standard for feature-length video discs. Triple-layer discs and quadruple layers are available for BD-XL re-writer drives, the name Blu-ray refers to the blue laser used to read the disc, which allows information to be stored at a greater density than is possible with the longer-wavelength red laser used for DVDs. The main application of Blu-ray is as a medium for video material such as films and physical distribution of video games for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4. Besides the hardware specifications, Blu-ray is associated with a set of multimedia formats, high-definition video may be stored on Blu-ray discs with up to 2160p resolution, at up to 60 frames per second. DVD discs had been limited to a resolution of 480p or 576p. The BD format was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, a group representing makers of consumer electronics, computer hardware, Sony unveiled the first Blu-ray disc prototypes in October 2000, and the first prototype player was released in April 2003 in Japan. Afterwards, it continued to be developed until its release in June 2006. During the high definition disc format war, Blu-ray Disc competed with the HD DVD format. Toshiba, the company that supported HD DVD, conceded in February 2008. According to Media Research, high-definition software sales in the US were slower in the first two years than DVD software sales, Blu-ray faces competition from video on demand and the continued sale of DVDs. As of January 2016, 44% of U. S. broadband households had a Blu-ray player, the information density of the DVD format was limited by the wavelength of the laser diodes used. Following protracted development, blue laser diodes operating at 405 nanometers became available on a production basis, Sony started two projects in collaboration with Philips applying the new diodes, UDO, and DVR Blue, a format of rewritable discs that would eventually become Blu-ray Disc. The core technologies of the formats are similar, the first DVR Blue prototypes were unveiled at the CEATEC exhibition in October 2000 by Sony. A trademark for the Blue Disc logo was filed February 9,2001, on February 19,2002, the project was officially announced as Blu-ray Disc, and Blu-ray Disc Founders was founded by the nine initial members. The first consumer device arrived in stores on April 10,2003, the Sony BDZ-S77, but there was no standard for prerecorded video, and no movies were released for this player. On October 4,2004, the name Blu-ray Disc Founders was officially changed to the Blu-ray Disc Association, the Blu-ray Disc physical specifications were completed in 2004
19.
DVD
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DVD is a digital optical disc storage format invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. The medium can store any kind of data and is widely used for software. DVDs offer higher capacity than compact discs while having the same dimensions. Pre-recorded DVDs are mass-produced using molding machines that physically stamp data onto the DVD, such discs are a form of DVD-ROM because data can only be read and not written or erased. Blank recordable DVD discs can be recorded using a DVD recorder. Rewritable DVDs can be recorded and erased many times, DVDs containing other types of information may be referred to as DVD data discs. The OED also states that in 1995, The companies said the name of the format will simply be DVD. Toshiba had been using the name ‘digital video disk’, but that was switched to ‘digital versatile disk’ after computer companies complained that it left out their applications, Digital versatile disc is the explanation provided in a DVD Forum Primer from 2000 and in the DVD Forums mission statement. There were several formats developed for recording video on optical discs before the DVD, Optical recording technology was invented by David Paul Gregg and James Russell in 1958 and first patented in 1961. A consumer optical disc data format known as LaserDisc was developed in the United States and it used much larger discs than the later formats. CD Video used analog video encoding on optical discs matching the established standard 120 mm size of audio CDs, Video CD became one of the first formats for distributing digitally encoded films in this format, in 1993. In the same year, two new optical disc formats were being developed. By the time of the launches for both formats in January 1995, the MMCD nomenclature had been dropped, and Philips and Sony were referring to their format as Digital Video Disc. Representatives from the SD camp asked IBM for advice on the system to use for their disc. Alan E. Bell, a researcher from IBMs Almaden Research Center, got that request and this group was referred to as the Technical Working Group, or TWG. On August 14,1995, an ad hoc group formed from five computer companies issued a release stating that they would only accept a single format. The TWG voted to both formats unless the two camps agreed on a single, converged standard. They recruited Lou Gerstner, president of IBM, to pressure the executives of the warring factions, as a result, the DVD specification provided a storage capacity of 4.7 GB for a single-layered, single-sided disc and 8.5 GB for a dual-layered, single-sided disc
20.
Compact disc
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Compact disc is a digital optical disc data storage format released in 1982 and co-developed by Philips and Sony. The format was developed to store and play only sound recordings but was later adapted for storage of data. The first commercially available Audio CD player, the Sony CDP-101, was released October 1982 in Japan, standard CDs have a diameter of 120 millimetres and can hold up to about 80 minutes of uncompressed audio or about 700 MiB of data. The Mini CD has various diameters ranging from 60 to 80 millimetres, they are used for CD singles, storing up to 24 minutes of audio. At the time of the introduction in 1982, a CD could store much more data than a personal computer hard drive. By 2010, hard drives commonly offered as much space as a thousand CDs. In 2004, worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs, by 2007,200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide. In 2014, revenues from digital music services matched those from physical format sales for the first time. American inventor James T. Russell has been credited with inventing the first system to record information on an optical transparent foil that is lit from behind by a high-power halogen lamp. Russells patent application was first filed in 1966, and he was granted a patent in 1970, following litigation, Sony and Philips licensed Russells patents in the 1980s. The compact disc is an evolution of LaserDisc technology, where a laser beam is used that enables the high information density required for high-quality digital audio signals. Prototypes were developed by Philips and Sony independently in the late 1970s, although originally dismissed by Philips Research management as a trivial pursuit, the CD became the primary focus for Philips as the LaserDisc format struggled. In 1979, Sony and Philips set up a joint task force of engineers to design a new audio disc. After a year of experimentation and discussion, the Red Book CD-DA standard was published in 1980, after their commercial release in 1982, compact discs and their players were extremely popular. Despite costing up to $1,000, over 400,000 CD players were sold in the United States between 1983 and 1984, by 1988 CD sales in the United States surpassed those of vinyl LPs, and by 1992 CD sales surpassed those of prerecorded music cassette tapes. The success of the disc has been credited to the cooperation between Philips and Sony, who came together to agree upon and develop compatible hardware. The unified design of the disc allowed consumers to purchase any disc or player from any company. In 1974, L. However, due to the performance of the analog format
21.
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
22.
Xbox One system software
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The Xbox One system software, sometimes called the Xbox OS, is the operating system for the eighth-generation home video game console, Xbox One. It is a Windows-based operating system using the Hyper-V virtual machine monitor and contains separate operating systems for games and it is located on the internal HDD for day-to-day usage, while also being duplicated on the internal NAND storage of the console for recovery purposes and factory reset functionality. The Xbox One allows users to download applications that add to the functionality of the dashboard, from June 2014 onwards, entertainment apps no longer required the user to be signed into a valid Xbox Live Gold account in order to use the features advertised for the given app. In November 2015, a system update known as the New Xbox One Experience was released. Notably, the Windows 10-based Core had replaced the Windows 8-based one in this update, the Xbox One console runs on an operating system that includes the Windows 10 core, although initially it included the Windows 8 core at the Xbox Ones release. The Xbox One system software contains a heavily modified Hyper-V hypervisor as its host OS, One of the partitions, the Exclusive partition is a custom virtual machine for games, the other partition, the Shared partition is a custom VM for running multiple apps. The Shared Partition contained the Windows 8 Core at launch until November 2015, with Windows 10, Universal Windows Platform apps became available on Xbox One. According to the current head of Microsofts Xbox division, Phil Spencer, The importance of entertainment, the program that Microsoft launched allows developers to build a single app that can run on a wide variety of devices, including personal computers and Xbox One video game consoles. According to Polygon, Microsoft is removing the distinction between Xbox One and Windows PC. Once registered for the Xbox One Preview Program, participants will be able to test the early features included in the update and provide feedback on a private forum and can opt out of future waves. Through its Xbox Feedback website, Microsoft has been soliciting input from consumers on its features, low battery notifications and Blu-ray 3D support are two examples of ideas that have been among the top vote-getters on the site. The dashboard is divided into Home, Community, OneGuide, and Store sections, the Home section contains a recent apps and games list, the Community section allows users to view their friends in-game activities and captures, post status updates, as well as view trending content. The OneGuide section aggregates television and online content, while the Store section serves as a portal to the games, video, music. In general, the top level menu of the Xbox One feels a lot less cluttered than the Xbox 360s dashboard, for example, the friends tab has been removed and replaced with a dedicated app that users can load up to see what their connections are doing. In total, the interface is very clean and sparse, Microsoft also introduced a new way to multitask called Snap, which allows Xbox One users to open multiple panes in a single window. The main feature on the screen is a list of most recently played games. Selecting any given title will give more information about announcements, achievements, social activity. It is also focused on the actual games they are playing, which is part and parcel of the company’s new direction under Phil Spencer
23.
Central processing unit
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The computer industry has used the term central processing unit at least since the early 1960s. The form, design and implementation of CPUs have changed over the course of their history, most modern CPUs are microprocessors, meaning they are contained on a single integrated circuit chip. An IC that contains a CPU may also contain memory, peripheral interfaces, some computers employ a multi-core processor, which is a single chip containing two or more CPUs called cores, in that context, one can speak of such single chips as sockets. Array processors or vector processors have multiple processors that operate in parallel, there also exists the concept of virtual CPUs which are an abstraction of dynamical aggregated computational resources. Early computers such as the ENIAC had to be rewired to perform different tasks. Since the term CPU is generally defined as a device for software execution, the idea of a stored-program computer was already present in the design of J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchlys ENIAC, but was initially omitted so that it could be finished sooner. On June 30,1945, before ENIAC was made, mathematician John von Neumann distributed the paper entitled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC and it was the outline of a stored-program computer that would eventually be completed in August 1949. EDVAC was designed to perform a number of instructions of various types. Significantly, the programs written for EDVAC were to be stored in high-speed computer memory rather than specified by the wiring of the computer. This overcame a severe limitation of ENIAC, which was the considerable time, with von Neumanns design, the program that EDVAC ran could be changed simply by changing the contents of the memory. Early CPUs were custom designs used as part of a larger, however, this method of designing custom CPUs for a particular application has largely given way to the development of multi-purpose processors produced in large quantities. This standardization began in the era of discrete transistor mainframes and minicomputers and has accelerated with the popularization of the integrated circuit. The IC has allowed increasingly complex CPUs to be designed and manufactured to tolerances on the order of nanometers, both the miniaturization and standardization of CPUs have increased the presence of digital devices in modern life far beyond the limited application of dedicated computing machines. Modern microprocessors appear in electronic devices ranging from automobiles to cellphones, the so-called Harvard architecture of the Harvard Mark I, which was completed before EDVAC, also utilized a stored-program design using punched paper tape rather than electronic memory. Relays and vacuum tubes were used as switching elements, a useful computer requires thousands or tens of thousands of switching devices. The overall speed of a system is dependent on the speed of the switches, tube computers like EDVAC tended to average eight hours between failures, whereas relay computers like the Harvard Mark I failed very rarely. In the end, tube-based CPUs became dominant because the significant speed advantages afforded generally outweighed the reliability problems, most of these early synchronous CPUs ran at low clock rates compared to modern microelectronic designs. Clock signal frequencies ranging from 100 kHz to 4 MHz were very common at this time, the design complexity of CPUs increased as various technologies facilitated building smaller and more reliable electronic devices
24.
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
25.
AMD
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While initially it manufactured its own processors, the company became fabless after GlobalFoundries was spun off in 2009. AMDs main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and graphics processors for servers, workstations and personal computers, AMD is the second-largest supplier and only significant rival to Intel in the market for x86-based microprocessors. Since acquiring ATI in 2006, AMD and its competitor Nvidia have dominated the discrete Graphics Processing Unit market, Advanced Micro Devices was formally incorporated on May 1,1969, by Jerry Sanders, along with seven of his colleagues from Fairchild Semiconductor. In September 1969, AMD moved from its location in Santa Clara to Sunnyvale. To immediately secure a base, AMD initially became a second source supplier of microchips designed by Fairchild. AMD first focused on producing logic chips, in November 1969, the company manufactured its first product, the Am9300, a 4-bit MSI shift register, which began selling in 1970. Also in 1970, AMD produced its first proprietary product, the Am2501 logic counter and its best-selling product in 1971 was the Am2505, the fastest multiplier available. In 1971, AMD entered the RAM chip market, beginning with the Am3101 and that year AMD also greatly increased the sales volume of its linear integrated circuits, and by year end the companys total annual sales reached $4.6 million. AMD went public in September 1972, the company was a second source for Intel MOS/LSI circuits by 1973, with products such as Am14/1506 and Am14/1507, dual 100-bit dynamic shift registers. By 1975, AMD was producing 212 products – of which 49 were proprietary, including the Am9102, Intel had created the first microprocessor, its 4-bit 4004, in 1971. By 1975, AMD entered the market with the Am9080, a reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 8080. In 1977, AMD entered into a joint venture with Siemens, Siemens purchased 20% of AMDs stock, giving AMD an infusion of cash to increase its product lines. When the two companies vision for Advanced Micro Computers diverged, AMD bought out Siemens stake in the U. S. division in 1979, AMD closed its Advanced Micro Computers subsidiary in late 1981, after switching focus to manufacturing second-source Intel x86 microprocessors. Total sales in fiscal year 1978 topped $100 million, and in 1979, in 1980, AMD began supplying semiconductor products for telecommunications, an industry undergoing rapid expansion and innovation. Intel had introduced the first x86 microprocessors in 1978, in 1981, IBM created its PC, and wanted Intels x86 processors, but only under the condition that Intel also provide a second-source manufacturer for its patented x86 microprocessors. Intel and AMD entered into a 10-year technology exchange agreement, first signed in October 1981, the technical information and licenses needed to make and sell a part would be exchanged for a royalty to the developing company. The 1982 agreement also extended the 1976 AMD–Intel cross-licensing agreement through 1995, the agreement included the right to invoke arbitration of disagreements, and after five years the right of either party to end the agreement with one years notice. It also continued its successful concentration on proprietary bipolar chips, in 1983, it introduced INT. STD.1000, the highest manufacturing quality standard in the industry
26.
AMD Accelerated Processing Unit
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The AMD Accelerated Processing Unit, formerly known as Fusion, is the marketing term for a series of 64-bit microprocessors from AMD designed to act as a CPU and graphics accelerator on a single chip. AMD announced the first generation APUs, Llano for high-performance and Brazos for low-power devices in January 2011, the second-generation Trinity for high-performance and Brazos-2 for low-power devices were announced in June 2012. The third-generation Kaveri for high performance devices was launched in January 2014, while Kabini, the Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One eighth generation video game consoles both use semi-custom third-generation low-power APUs. Although it does not use the name APU, Intels CPUs with integrated HD Graphics are architecturally very similar, the AMD Fusion project started in 2006 with the aim of developing a system on a chip that combined a CPU with a GPU on a single die. AMD took a key step toward realising such a vision when it acquired the graphics chipset manufacturer ATI in 2006, the project reportedly required three internal iterations of the Fusion concept to create a product deemed worthy of release. The first generation desktop and laptop APU, codenamed Llano, was announced on January 4,2011 at the 2011 CES show in Las Vegas and it featured K10 CPU cores and a Radeon HD 6000-series GPU on the same die on the FM1 socket. An APU for low-power devices was announced as the Brazos platform, based on the Bobcat microarchitecture and a Radeon HD 6000-series GPU on the same die. However, it was revealed that AMD had been the subject of a trademark infringement lawsuit by the Swiss company Arctic. The second generation desktop and laptop APU, codenamed Trinity was announced at AMDs Financial Analyst Day 2010 and it featured Piledriver CPU cores and Radeon HD7000 Series GPU cores on the FM2 socket. AMD released a new APU based on the Piledriver microarchitecture on March 12,2013 for Laptops/Mobile, semi-custom chips were introduced in the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 video games consoles. A third generation of the technology was released on 14 January 2014, the desktop and laptop variant is codenamed Kaveri, based on Steamroller architecture, while the low-power variants, codenamed Kabini and Temash, are based on Jaguar architecture. AMD is a member of the HSA Foundation and is consequently actively working on developing the Heterogeneous System Architecture in co-operation with the other members. This architecture allows for the use of graphics accelerators, such as OpenCL, stars AMD K10-cores Integrated Evergreen/VLIW5-based GPU Northbridge PCIe DDR3 memory controller to arbitrate between coherent and non-coherent memory requests. The physical memory is partitioned between the GPU and the CPU, Unified Video Decoder AMD Eyefinity multi-monitor-support The first generation APU, released in June 2011, was used in both desktops and laptops.2 and OpenCL1.2. In performance comparisons against the similarly priced Intel Core i3-2105, the Llano APU was criticised for its poor CPU performance, AMD was later criticised for abandoning Socket FM1 after one generation. Bobcat-based CPU Evergreen/VLIW5-based GPU Northbridge PCIe support, DDR3 SDRAM memory controller to arbitrate between coherent and non-coherent memory requests. The physical memory is partitioned between the GPU and the CPU, Unified Video Decoder The AMD Brazos platform was introduced on January 4,2011 targeting the subnotebook, netbook and low power small form factor markets. It features the 9-watt AMD C-Series APU for netbooks and low power devices as well as the 18-watt AMD E-Series APU for mainstream and value notebooks, all-in-ones and small form factor desktops
27.
DDR3 SDRAM
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Double data rate type three SDRAM is a type of synchronous dynamic random-access memory with a high bandwidth interface, and has been in use since 2007. It is the successor to DDR and DDR2 and predecessor to DDR4 synchronous dynamic random-access memory chips. DDR3 SDRAM is neither forward nor backward compatible with any type of random-access memory because of different signaling voltages, timings. DDR3 is a DRAM interface specification, the actual DRAM arrays that store the data are similar to earlier types, with similar performance. The primary benefit of DDR3 SDRAM over its predecessor, DDR2 SDRAM, is its ability to transfer data at twice the rate. With two transfers per cycle of a clock signal, a 64-bit wide DDR3 module may achieve a transfer rate of up to 64 times the memory clock speed. With data being transferred 64 bits at a time per memory module, thus with a memory clock frequency of 100 MHz, DDR3 SDRAM gives a maximum transfer rate of 6400 MB/s. The DDR3 standard permits DRAM chip capacities of up to 8 gibibits, because of a hardware limitation not fixed until Ivy Bridge-E in 2013, most older Intel CPUs only support up to 4 gibibit chips for 8 GiB DIMMs. All AMD CPUs correctly support the full spec for 16GiB DDR3 DIMMs, compared to DDR2 memory, DDR3 memory uses less power. This reduction comes from the difference in supply voltages,1.8 V or 1.9 V for DDR2 versus 1.35 V or 1.5 V for DDR3. The 1.5 V supply voltage works well with the 90 nanometer fabrication technology used in the original DDR3 chips, some manufacturers further propose using dual-gate transistors to reduce leakage of current. According to JEDEC,1.575 volts should be considered the maximum when memory stability is the foremost consideration. In addition, JEDEC states that memory modules must withstand up to 1.80 volts before incurring permanent damage, another benefit is its prefetch buffer, which is 8-burst-deep. In contrast, the buffer of DDR2 is 4-burst-deep. This advantage is a technology in DDR3s transfer speed. DDR3 modules can transfer data at a rate of 800–2133 MT/s using both rising and falling edges of a 400–1066 MHz I/O clock and this is twice DDR2s data transfer rates and four times the rate of DDR. High-performance graphics was a driver of such bandwidth requirements, where high bandwidth data transfer between framebuffers is required. It is also misleading because various memory timings are given in units of clock cycles, DDR3 does use the same electric signaling standard as DDR and DDR2, Stub Series Terminated Logic, albeit at different timings and voltages
28.
Hard disk drive
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The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order. HDDs are a type of storage, retaining stored data even when powered off. Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs became the dominant secondary storage device for computers by the early 1960s. Continuously improved, HDDs have maintained this position into the era of servers. More than 200 companies have produced HDDs historically, though after extensive industry consolidation most current units are manufactured by Seagate, Toshiba, as of 2016, HDD production is growing, although unit shipments and sales revenues are declining. While SSDs have higher cost per bit, SSDs are replacing HDDs where speed, power consumption, small size, the primary characteristics of an HDD are its capacity and performance. Capacity is specified in unit prefixes corresponding to powers of 1000, the two most common form factors for modern HDDs are 3. 5-inch, for desktop computers, and 2. 5-inch, primarily for laptops. HDDs are connected to systems by standard interface cables such as PATA, SATA, Hard disk drives were introduced in 1956, as data storage for an IBM real-time transaction processing computer and were developed for use with general-purpose mainframe and minicomputers. The first IBM drive, the 350 RAMAC in 1956, was approximately the size of two medium-sized refrigerators and stored five million six-bit characters on a stack of 50 disks. In 1962 the IBM350 RAMAC disk storage unit was superseded by the IBM1301 disk storage unit, cylinder-mode read/write operations were supported, and the heads flew about 250 micro-inches above the platter surface. Motion of the head array depended upon a binary system of hydraulic actuators which assured repeatable positioning. The 1301 cabinet was about the size of three home refrigerators placed side by side, storing the equivalent of about 21 million eight-bit bytes, access time was about a quarter of a second. Also in 1962, IBM introduced the model 1311 disk drive, users could buy additional packs and interchange them as needed, much like reels of magnetic tape. Later models of removable pack drives, from IBM and others, became the norm in most computer installations, non-removable HDDs were called fixed disk drives. Some high-performance HDDs were manufactured with one head per track so that no time was lost physically moving the heads to a track, known as fixed-head or head-per-track disk drives they were very expensive and are no longer in production. In 1973, IBM introduced a new type of HDD code-named Winchester and its primary distinguishing feature was that the disk heads were not withdrawn completely from the stack of disk platters when the drive was powered down. Instead, the heads were allowed to land on an area of the disk surface upon spin-down
29.
USB 3.0
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USB3.0 is the third major version of the Universal Serial Bus standard for interfacing computers and electronic devices. Among other improvements, USB3.0 adds the new transfer rate referred to as SuperSpeed USB that can transfer data at up to 5 Gbit/s, which is about ten times as fast as the USB2.0 standard. Manufacturers are recommended to distinguish USB3.0 connectors from their USB2.0 counterparts by blue color-coding of the Standard-A receptacles and plugs, USB3.1, released in July 2013, is the successor standard that replaces the USB3.0 standard. The specification of USB3.0 is similar to that of USB2.0, but with many improvements, earlier USB concepts such as endpoints and the four transfer types are preserved but the protocol and electrical interface are different. The specification defines a separate channel to carry USB3.0 traffic. This gives USB3.0 a potential total bandwidth, if used both ways, of twenty times that of USB2.0. In USB3.0, dual-bus architecture is used to allow both USB2.0 and USB3.0 operations to take place simultaneously, thus providing backward compatibility. Connections are such that they also permit forward compatibility, that is, the structural topology is the same, consisting of a tiered star topology with a root hub at level 0 and hubs at lower levels to provide bus connectivity to devices. The SuperSpeed transaction is initiated by the host making a request followed by a response from the device, the device either accepts the request or rejects it, if accepted, the device sends data or accepts data from the host. If the endpoint is halted, the device shall respond with a STALL handshake, if there is lack of buffer space or data, it responds with a Not Ready signal to tell the host that it is not able to process the request. When the device is ready, it will send an Endpoint Ready to the host which will then reschedule the transaction, the SuperSpeed bus provides for a transfer mode at a nominal rate of 5.0 Gbit/s, in addition to the three existing transfer modes. Accounting for the overhead, the raw data throughput is 4 Gbit/s. Scrambling is implemented using a linear feedback shift register. The LFSR is reset whenever a COM symbol is sent or received, unlike previous standards, the USB3. As with earlier versions of USB, USB3.0 provides power at 5 volts nominal, the available current for low-power SuperSpeed devices is 150 mA, an increase from the 100 mA defined in USB2.0. For high-power SuperSpeed devices, the limit is six unit loads or 900 mA and this move effectively opened the specification to hardware developers for implementation in future products. Manufacturers of USB3.0 host controllers include, but are not limited to, Renesas Electronics, Fresco Logic, ASMedia Technology, Etron, VIA Technologies, Texas Instruments, NEC, as of November 2010, Renesas and Fresco Logic have passed USB-IF certification. Motherboards for Intels Sandy Bridge processors have been seen with Asmedia, on 28 October 2010, Hewlett-Packard released the HP Envy 17 3D featuring a Renesas USB3.0 host controller several months before some of their competitors
30.
4K resolution
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4K resolution, also called 4K, refers to a horizontal resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels and vertical resolution on the order of 2,000 pixels. Several 4K resolutions exist in the fields of television and digital cinematography. In the movie industry, Digital Cinema Initiatives is the dominant 4K standard. In television and consumer media, 4K UHD or UHD-1 is the dominant 4K standard, by 2015, 4K television market share had increased greatly as prices fell dramatically during 2014 and 2015. By 2025, more than half of U. S. households are expected to have a 4K-capable TV, the name 4K resolution refers to a horizontal resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. The use of width to characterize the overall resolution marks a switch from previous television standards such as 480i and 1080p, using that same convention, 4K UHD would be named 2160p. There are two main 4K resolution standards, The DCI 4K resolution standard, which has a resolution of 4096 ×2160 pixels and this standard is widely respected by the film and video production industry. The DCI 4K standard has twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of DCI 2K, UHD-1, or ultra-high-definition television, is the 4K standard for television and computer monitors. UHD-1 is also called 2160p since it has twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of 1080p and it has a resolution of 3840 ×2160. UHD-1 is used in television and other media, e. g. video games. Many manufacturers may advertise their products as UHD 4K, or simply 4K and this often causes great confusion among consumers. YouTube and the industry have adopted UHD-1 as their 4K standard. As of 2014, 4K content from major broadcasters remains limited, the channel is licensed by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to provide educational content. However, 4K content is becoming widely available online including on YouTube, Netflix. By 2013, some UHDTV models were available to consumers in the range of US$600. As of 2015, prices on smaller computer and television panels had dropped below US$400, DVB expects UHD-1 Phase 2 services to be introduced by broadcasters from 2017, with features such as High Dynamic Range, Wide Color Gamut, and High Frame Rate. The first commercially available 4K camera for cinematographic purposes was the Dalsa Origin, YouTube began supporting 4K for video uploads in 2010 as a result of leading manufacturers producing 4K cameras. Users could view 4K video by selecting Original from the quality settings until December 2013, the projection of movies at 4K resolution at cinemas began in 2011
31.
1080p
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1080p is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1080 horizontal lines of vertical resolution, the p stands for progressive scan, id est non-interlaced. The term usually assumes a widescreen ratio of 16,9. It is often marketed as full HD, to contrast 1080p with 720p resolution screens, 1080p video signals are supported by ATSC standards in the United States and DVB standards in Europe. Small camcorders, smartphones and digital cameras can capture still and moving images in 1080p resolution.485 Gbit/s to nominally 3 Gbit/s using uncompressed RGB encoding. Most current revisions of SMPTE 372M, SMPTE 424M and EBU Tech 3299 require YCbCr color space and 4,2,2 chroma subsampling for transmitting 1080p50 and 1080p60 signal. In the United States, the original ATSC standards for HDTV supported 1080p video, in July 2008, the ATSC standards were amended to include H. 264/MPEG-4 AVC compression and 1080p at 50,59.94 and 60 frames per second. Such frame rates require H. 264/AVC High Profile Level 4.2, in Europe, 1080p25 signals have been supported by the DVB suite of broadcasting standards. The 1080p50 format is considered to be a production format and, eventually. EBU requires that legacy MPEG-4 AVC decoders should avoid crashing in the presence of SVC and/or 1080p50 packets, the ITU-T BT.2100 standard that includes advanced 1080p video was subsequently published in July 2016. There is no word when any of the networks will consider airing at 1080p in the foreseeable future. However, satellite services utilize the 1080p/24-30 format with MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 encoding for pay-per-view movies that are downloaded in advance via satellite or on-demand via broadband. At this time, no pay service such as USA, HDNET, etc. nor premium movie channel such as HBO. For material that originates from a progressive scanned 24 frame/s source, MPEG-2 lets the video be coded as 1080p24 and these progressively-coded frames are tagged with metadata instructing a decoder how to perform a 3,2 pulldown to interlace them. In June 2016, Germany commenced terrestrial broadcasts of eight 1080p50 high-definition channels, using DVB-T2 protocol with HEVC encoding, a total of 40 channels will be available by March 2017. Blu-ray Discs are able to hold 1080p HD content, and most movies released on Blu-ray Disc produce a full 1080p HD picture when the player is connected to a 1080p HDTV via an HDMI cable. The Blu-ray Disc video specification allows encoding of 1080p23.976, 1080p24, 1080i50, generally this type of video runs at 30 to 40 megabits per second, compared to the 3.5 megabits per second for conventional standard definition broadcasts. Smartphones with 1080p FullHD display have been available on the market since 2012, as of the end of 2014, it is the standard for mid-range to high-end smartphones and many of the flagship devices of 2014 used even higher resolutions. Several websites, including YouTube, allow videos to be uploaded in the 1080p format, YouTube streams 1080p content at approximately 4 megabits per second compared to Blu-rays 30 to 40 megabits per second
32.
720p
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720p is a progressive HDTV signal format with 720 horizontal lines and an aspect ratio of 16,9, normally known as widescreen HDTV. The number 720 stands for the 720 horizontal scan lines of display resolution. The p stands for progressive scan, i. e. non-interlaced, when broadcast at 60 frames per second, 720p features the highest temporal resolution possible under the ATSC and DVB standards. The term assumes a widescreen ratio of 16,9. 720i is a term found in numerous sources and publications. Typically, it is an error in which the author is referring to the 720p HDTV format. However, in cases it is incorrectly presented as an actual alternative format to 720p. No proposed or existing broadcast standard permits 720 interlaced lines in a frame at any frame rate. Progressive scanning reduces the need to prevent flicker by anti-aliasing single high contrast horizontal lines and it is also easier to perform high-quality 50↔60 Hz conversion and slow-motion clips with progressive video. A 720p60 video has advantage over 480i and 1080i60 in that it reduces the number of 3,2 artifacts introduced during transfer from 24 frame/s film. However, 576i and 1080i50, which are common in Europe, generally do not suffer from pull down artifacts as film frames are simply played at 25 frames and the audio pitch corrected by 25/24ths. As a result, 720p60 is used for U. S. broadcasts while European HD broadcasts often use 1080i50 24* frame, arte, a dual-language French-German channel produced in collaboration by ARD, ZDF and France Télévisions, broadcasts in German at 720p50 but in French at 1080i50. EBU Technical paper on HDTV formats
33.
Radeon
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The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon Graphics is the successor to the Rage line, three different families of microarchitectures can be roughly distinguished, the fixed-pipeline family and the unified shader model-families of TeraScale and Graphics Core Next. ATI/AMD have developed different technologies, such as TruForm, HyperMemory, HyperZ, XGP, Eyefinity for multi-monitor setups, PowerPlay for power-saving, CrossFire or Hybrid Graphics. A range of SIP blocks is also to be found on models in the Radeon products line, Unified Video Decoder, Video Coding Engine. The brand was only known as ATI Radeon until August 2010. Products up to and including the HD5000 series are branded as ATI Radeon, while the HD6000 series and beyond use the new AMD Radeon branding. On September 11,2015, AMDs GPU business was split into a unit known as Radeon Technologies Group, with Raja Koduri as Senior Vice President. Though it did at one time, AMD does not distribute Radeon cards directly to consumers, instead, it sells Radeon GPUs to third-party manufacturers, who build and sell the Radeon-based video cards to the OEM and retail channels. Manufacturers of the Radeon cards—some of whom also make motherboards—include Sapphire, XFX, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Biostar, Gainward, Diamond, HIS, PowerColor, Club 3D, VisionTek, early generations were identified with a number and major/minor alphabetic prefix. Later generations were assigned code names, new or heavily redesigned architectures have a prefix of R while slight modifications are indicated by the RV prefix. The first derivative architecture, RV200, did not follow the scheme used by later parts, the Radeon, first introduced in 2000, was ATIs first graphics processor to be fully DirectX7 compliant. R100 brought with it gains in bandwidth and fill-rate efficiency through the new HyperZ technology. The RV200 was a die-shrink of the former R100 with some core logic tweaks for clockspeed, introduced in 2002, the only release in this generation was the Radeon 7500, which introduced little in the way of new features but offered substantial performance improvements over its predecessors. ATIs second generation Radeon included a pixel shader architecture. This chipset implemented Microsofts pixel shader 1.4 specification for the first time and its performance relative to competitors was widely perceived as weak, and subsequent revisions of this generation were cancelled in order to focus on development of the next generation. The R300 was the first GPU to fully support Microsofts DirectX9.0 technology upon its release in 2001 and it incorporated fully programmable pixel and vertex shaders. About a year later, the architecture was revised to allow for higher frequencies, more efficient memory access, a budget line of RV350 products was based on this refreshed design with some elements disabled or removed. Models using the new PCI Express interface were introduced in 2004, using 110-nm and 130-nm manufacturing technologies under the X300 and X600 names, respectively, the RV370 and RV380 graphics processors were used extensively by consumer PC manufacturers
34.
Graphics Core Next
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Graphics Core Next is the codename for both a series of microarchitectures as well as for an instruction set. GCN was developed by AMD for their GPUs as the successor to TeraScale microarchitecture/instruction set, the first product featuring GCN was launched in 2011. GCN is used in 28 nm and 14 nm graphics chips in the Radeon HD 7700–7900, HD8000, R9 240–290, R9300, and Radeon 400 series of AMD graphics cards. GCN is also used in the AMD Accelerated Processing Units code-named Temash, Kabini, Kaveri, Carrizo, Beema and Mullins, as well as in Liverpool, GCN is a RISC SIMD microarchitecture contrasting the VLIW SIMD architecture of TeraScale. GCN requires considerably more transistors than TeraScale, but offers advantages for GPGPU computation and it makes the compiler simpler and should also lead to better utilization. The GCN instruction set is owned by AMD as well as the X86-64 instruction set, the GCN instruction set has been developed specifically for GPUs and e. g. has no micro-operation for division. An LLVM code generator is available for the GCN instruction set and it is used e. g. by Mesa 3D. MIAOW is an open-source RTL implementation of the AMD Southern Islands GPGPU instruction set, in November 2015, AMD announced the Boltzmann Initiative. The AMD Boltzmann Initiative shall enable the porting of CUDA-based applications to a common C++ programming model, as of February 2017 the family of microarchitectures implementing the identically called instruction set Graphics Core Next has seen four iterations. The differences in the set are rather minimal, and microarchitectures also do not differentiate too much from one another. The Graphics Command Processor is a unit of the GCN microarchicture. Among other tasks, it is responsible for Asynchronous Shaders, the short video AMD Asynchronous Shaders visualizes the differences between multi thread, preemption and Asynchronous Shaders. The Asynchronous Compute Engine is a functional block serving computing purposes. It purpose is similar to that of the Graphics Command Processor, since the third iteration of GCN, the hardware contains two schedulers, One to schedule wavefronts during shader execution and a new one to schedule execution of draw and compute queues. The latter helps performance by executing compute operations when the CUs are underutilized because of graphics commands limited by fixed function pipeline speed or bandwidth limited and this functionality is known as Async Compute. For a given shader, the gpu drivers also need to select a good instruction order and this is done on cpu, and is sometimes referred as Scheduling. The geometry processor contains the Geometry Assembler, the Tesselator and the Vertex Assembler, the GCN Tesselator of the Geometry processor is capable of doing tessellation in hardware as defined by Direct3D11 and OpenGL4.5 in ). The GCN Tesselator is AMDs most current SIP block, earlier units were ATI TruForm, four Compute units are wired to share an Instruction Cache 16 KiB in size and a scalar data cache 32KiB in size
35.
HDMI
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HDMI is a digital replacement for analog video standards. HDMI implements the EIA/CEA-861 standards, which video formats and waveforms, transport of compressed, uncompressed, and LPCM audio, auxiliary data. CEA-861 signals carried by HDMI are electrically compatible with the CEA-861 signals used by the visual interface. No signal conversion is necessary, nor is there a loss of quality when a DVI-to-HDMI adapter is used. The CEC capability allows HDMI devices to each other when necessary. Several versions of HDMI have been developed and deployed since initial release of the technology but all use the same cable and connector. Other than improved audio and video capacity, performance, resolution and color spaces, newer versions have optional advanced features such as 3D, Ethernet data connection, production of consumer HDMI products started in late 2003. In Europe either DVI-HDCP or HDMI is included in the HD ready in-store labeling specification for TV sets for HDTV, HDMI began to appear on consumer HDTV camcorders and digital still cameras in 2006. As of January 6,2015, over 4 billion HDMI devices have been sold, the HDMI founders are Hitachi, Panasonic, Philips, Silicon Image, Sony, Thomson, RCA and Toshiba. Digital Content Protection, LLC provides HDCP for HDMI, HDMI has the support of motion picture producers Fox, Universal, Warner Bros. and Disney, along with system operators DirecTV, EchoStar and CableLabs. The HDMI founders began development on HDMI1.0 on April 16,2002, at the time, DVI-HDCP and DVI-HDTV were being used on HDTVs. HDMI1.0 was designed to improve on DVI-HDTV by using a connector and adding audio capability and enhanced YCbCr capability. The first Authorized Testing Center, which tests HDMI products, was opened by Silicon Image on June 23,2003, in California, the first ATC in Japan was opened by Panasonic on May 1,2004, in Osaka. The first ATC in Europe was opened by Philips on May 25,2005, in Caen, the first ATC in China was opened by Silicon Image on November 21,2005, in Shenzhen. The first ATC in India was opened by Philips on June 12,2008, the HDMI website contains a list of all the ATCs. According to In-Stat, the number of HDMI devices sold was 5 million in 2004,17.4 million in 2005,63 million in 2006, and 143 million in 2007. HDMI has become the de facto standard for HDTVs, and according to In-Stat, In-Stat has estimated that 229 million HDMI devices were sold in 2008. On April 8,2008 there were over 850 consumer electronics, on January 7,2009, HDMI Licensing, LLC announced that HDMI had reached an installed base of over 600 million HDMI devices
36.
Xbox One controller
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Xbox One Wireless Controller is the primary controller for the Microsoft Xbox One console. The controller contains a micro USB port, enabling wired use of the controller with the console or on computers running Windows 7 or later with drivers, the buttons themselves are also spaced slightly closer together. The bumpers were made flush with the triggers. The triggers themselves now have a feel, and were made more accurate. Each trigger features independent rumble motors called Impulse Triggers, which allows developers to program directional vibration, One trigger can be made to vibrate when firing a gun, or both can work together to create feedback that indicates the direction of an incoming hit. A standard Xbox One controller features ten buttons, a syncing button. The right face of the features four digital actions buttons, a green A button, red B button, blue X button. The lower right houses the right stick, in lower left is a digital D-pad. Both analog sticks can also be clicked in to activate a digital button beneath, in the center of the controller face are digital View, Menu and Guide buttons. The Guide button is labelled with the Xbox logo, and is used to turn on the console/controller, unlike the Xbox 360 controller, the Xbox One controller features a white, glowing Xbox logo on its guide button and does not feature the ring of light. The left and right shoulders each feature a shoulder button, or bumper. The standard black controller, shipped with all standard Xbox One consoles, on June 9,2015, Microsoft unveiled a revised version of the standard controller. Its shoulder buttons were redesigned for improved responsiveness, a 3.5 mm headphone jack was added near the controllers expansion port, a third revision of the standard controller was launched in August 2016, as the controller to be included with the Xbox One S. This controller also became the standard controller packaged with regular Xbox One consoles since then, per a partnership between Microsoft and Oculus VR, Xbox One controllers are bundled with the Oculus Rift. Versions with the inscription DAY ONE2013 were bundled with limited Day One Edition Xbox One bundles at launch in November 2013, which were intended for those who pre-ordered the console. A white version of the controller was bundled with white Xbox One hardware, such as the Sunset Overdrive bundle. The ones in the employee bundle contain the inscription I MADE THIS LAUNCH TEAM2013, Forces controllers, featuring camouflage pattern, first, the Armed Forces controller, in green color, was released in October 2014. The design was made in a blue-colored variant called Midnight Forces, released in November 2014
37.
Xbox (software)
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The Xbox app is a dashboard for Xbox Live accounts. The Xbox app is available for Microsoft Windows, Android, the Xbox app features achievements, recommended games, games that friends are playing, party planning, and instant messaging. When a user launches it for the first time, the app will offer to create an Xbox Live account for a user or automatically create an avatar. The app automatically displays games installed through the Windows Store and users can manually add games installed outside the Windows Store, the Game DVR can be opened by hitting the Win + G screenshot combination, other Game Bar settings can be customized in the app. Despite the name, any app can be recorded, although Game DVR does not include a keylogger, Microsoft considers it a replacement for the discontinued Steps Recorder. The Xbox app also features audio/video quality settings and whether to automatically record game clips that can be saved later, the Trending feature shows trends from Beam and Xbox Live. The Xbox apps contact management integrates with People, if a Facebook account is connected, the user will see Facebook friends listed in the friends suggestion list. If a Twitter account is connected, the user will automatically tweet Xbox game achievements, Xbox SmartGlass was originally announced during the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo. The announcement was accompanied with demonstrations on how the application would work and these demonstrations included Madden NFL13, Halo 4, and Internet Explorer. The Windows 10 family of operating systems introduced a version of SmartGlass referred to simply as Xbox. The PC version of the Xbox App also supports Game DVR on supported hardware, on June 13,2016, the Android and iOS versions of Xbox One SmartGlass were updated and re-branded as Xbox, coinciding with an updated user interface that is similar to the Windows 10 version. Xbox 360 SmartGlass was not updated, the Xbox app encourages users to download related apps from the Windows Store. The Xbox Avatars app allows the user to customize the avatars physique, the Xbox Accessories app allows the user to change the setup of an Xbox One console. PlayStation App Official website Xbox on Windows Store
38.
Wi-Fi
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Wi-Fi or WiFi is a technology for wireless local area networking with devices based on the IEEE802.11 standards. Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance, which restricts the use of the term Wi-Fi Certified to products that successfully complete interoperability certification testing. Devices that can use Wi-Fi technology include personal computers, video-game consoles, smartphones, digital cameras, tablet computers, digital audio players, Wi-Fi compatible devices can connect to the Internet via a WLAN network and a wireless access point. Such an access point has a range of about 20 meters indoors, hotspot coverage can be as small as a single room with walls that block radio waves, or as large as many square kilometres achieved by using multiple overlapping access points. Wi-Fi most commonly uses the 2.4 gigahertz UHF and 5 gigahertz SHF ISM radio bands, having no physical connections, it is more vulnerable to attack than wired connections, such as Ethernet. In 1971, ALOHAnet connected the Hawaiian Islands with a UHF wireless packet network, ALOHAnet and the ALOHA protocol were early forerunners to Ethernet, and later the IEEE802.11 protocols, respectively. A1985 ruling by the U. S. Federal Communications Commission released the ISM band for unlicensed use and these frequency bands are the same ones used by equipment such as microwave ovens and are subject to interference. In 1991, NCR Corporation with AT&T Corporation invented the precursor to 802.11, the first wireless products were under the name WaveLAN. They are the credited with inventing Wi-Fi. In 1992 and 1996, CSIRO obtained patents for a method used in Wi-Fi to unsmear the signal. The first version of the 802.11 protocol was released in 1997 and this was updated in 1999 with 802. 11b to permit 11 Mbit/s link speeds, and this proved to be popular. In 1999, the Wi-Fi Alliance formed as an association to hold the Wi-Fi trademark under which most products are sold. Wi-Fi uses a number of patents held by many different organizations. In April 2009,14 technology companies agreed to pay CSIRO $1 billion for infringements on CSIRO patents and this led to Australia labeling Wi-Fi as an Australian invention, though this has been the subject of some controversy. In 2016, the local area network Test Bed was chosen as Australias contribution to the exhibition A History of the World in 100 Objects held in the National Museum of Australia. The name Wi-Fi, commercially used at least as early as August 1999, was coined by the brand-consulting firm Interbrand, the Wi-Fi Alliance had hired Interbrand to create a name that was a little catchier than IEEE802. 11b Direct Sequence. Phil Belanger, a member of the Wi-Fi Alliance who presided over the selection of the name Wi-Fi, has stated that Interbrand invented Wi-Fi as a pun upon the word hi-fi. Interbrand also created the Wi-Fi logo, the yin-yang Wi-Fi logo indicates the certification of a product for interoperability
39.
Ethernet
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Ethernet /ˈiːθərnɛt/ is a family of computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks, metropolitan area networks and wide area networks. It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1983 as IEEE802.3, over time, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies such as token ring, FDDI and ARCNET. The original 10BASE5 Ethernet uses coaxial cable as a medium, while the newer Ethernet variants use twisted pair. Over the course of its history, Ethernet data transfer rates have increased from the original 2.94 megabits per second to the latest 100 gigabits per second. The Ethernet standards comprise several wiring and signaling variants of the OSI physical layer in use with Ethernet, systems communicating over Ethernet divide a stream of data into shorter pieces called frames. As per the OSI model, Ethernet provides services up to, since its commercial release, Ethernet has retained a good degree of backward compatibility. Features such as the 48-bit MAC address and Ethernet frame format have influenced other networking protocols, the primary alternative for some uses of contemporary LANs is Wi-Fi, a wireless protocol standardized as IEEE802.11. Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974 and it was inspired by ALOHAnet, which Robert Metcalfe had studied as part of his PhD dissertation. In 1975, Xerox filed a patent application listing Metcalfe, David Boggs, Chuck Thacker, in 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Metcalfe and Boggs published a seminal paper. Metcalfe left Xerox in June 1979 to form 3Com and he convinced Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel, and Xerox to work together to promote Ethernet as a standard. The so-called DIX standard, for Digital/Intel/Xerox, specified 10 Mbit/s Ethernet, with 48-bit destination and source addresses and it was published on September 30,1980 as The Ethernet, A Local Area Network. Data Link Layer and Physical Layer Specifications, version 2 was published in November,1982 and defines what has become known as Ethernet II. Formal standardization efforts proceeded at the time and resulted in the publication of IEEE802.3 on June 23,1983. Ethernet initially competed with two largely proprietary systems, Token Ring and Token Bus, in the process, 3Com became a major company. 3Com shipped its first 10 Mbit/s Ethernet 3C100 NIC in March 1981, an Ethernet adapter card for the IBM PC was released in 1982, and, by 1985, 3Com had sold 100,000. Parallel port based Ethernet adapters were produced for a time, with drivers for DOS, by the early 1990s, Ethernet became so prevalent that it was a must-have feature for modern computers, and Ethernet ports began to appear on some PCs and most workstations. This process was sped up with the introduction of 10BASE-T and its relatively small modular connector. Since then, Ethernet technology has evolved to meet new bandwidth, in addition to computers, Ethernet is now used to interconnect appliances and other personal devices
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S/PDIF
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S/PDIF is a type of digital audio interconnect used in consumer audio equipment to output audio over reasonably short distances. The signal is transmitted over either a cable with RCA connectors or a fibre optic cable with TOSLINK connectors. S/PDIF interconnects components in home theatres and other digital high-fidelity systems, S/PDIF is based on the AES3 interconnect standard. S/PDIF is a link layer protocol as well a set of physical layer specifications for carrying digital audio signals between devices and components over either optical or electrical cable. The name stands for Sony/Philips Digital Interconnect Format but is known as Sony/Philips Digital Interface. Sony and Philips were the designers of S/PDIF. S/PDIF is standardized in IEC60958 as IEC60958 type II, a common use for the S/PDIF interface is to carry compressed digital audio for surround sound as defined by the standard IEC61937. This mode is used to connect the output of a DVD player or computer, via optical or coax, another common use is to carry two channels of uncompressed digital audio from a CD player to an amplifying receiver. S/PDIF was developed at the time as the main standard, AES3. The RCA connectors are typically colour-coded orange to differentiate from other RCA connector uses such as composite video, the cable was also changed from 110 Ω balanced twisted pair to 75 Ω coaxial cable, using RCA jacks. Signals transmitted over consumer-grade TOSLINK connections are identical in content to those transmitted over coaxial connectors, though TOSLINK S/PDIF commonly exhibits higher jitter. S/PDIF is used to digital signals of a number of formats, the most common being the 48 kHz sample rate format. In order to both systems, as well as others that might be needed, the format has no defined data rate. Instead, the data is sent using biphase mark code, which has one or two transitions for every bit, allowing the original word clock to be extracted from the signal itself. S/PDIF is meant to be used for transmitting 20-bit audio data streams plus other related information, to transmit sources with less than 20 bits of sample accuracy, the superfluous bits will be set to zero. S/PDIF can also transport 24-bit samples by way of four bits, however, not all equipment supports this. With one exception, S/PDIF protocol is identical to AES3, the channel status bit differs in S/PDIF. There is one channel status bit in each subframe, making 384 bits in each audio block, the meaning of the channel status bits is completely different between AES3 and S/PDIF
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Infrared
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It extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers, to 1000000 nm. Most of the radiation emitted by objects near room temperature is infrared. Like all EMR, IR carries radiant energy, and behaves both like a wave and like its quantum particle, the photon, slightly more than half of the total energy from the Sun was eventually found to arrive on Earth in the form of infrared. The balance between absorbed and emitted infrared radiation has an effect on Earths climate. Infrared radiation is emitted or absorbed by molecules when they change their rotational-vibrational movements and it excites vibrational modes in a molecule through a change in the dipole moment, making it a useful frequency range for study of these energy states for molecules of the proper symmetry. Infrared spectroscopy examines absorption and transmission of photons in the infrared range, Infrared radiation is used in industrial, scientific, and medical applications. Night-vision devices using active near-infrared illumination allow people or animals to be observed without the observer being detected, Infrared thermal-imaging cameras are used to detect heat loss in insulated systems, to observe changing blood flow in the skin, and to detect overheating of electrical apparatuses. Thermal-infrared imaging is used extensively for military and civilian purposes, military applications include target acquisition, surveillance, night vision, homing, and tracking. Humans at normal body temperature radiate chiefly at wavelengths around 10 μm, Infrared radiation extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers to 1 mm. This range of wavelengths corresponds to a range of approximately 430 THz down to 300 GHz. Below infrared is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sunlight, at a temperature of 5,780 kelvins, is composed of near thermal-spectrum radiation that is slightly more than half infrared. At zenith, sunlight provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level, of this energy,527 watts is infrared radiation,445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation. Nearly all the radiation in sunlight is near infrared, shorter than 4 micrometers. On the surface of Earth, at far lower temperatures than the surface of the Sun, almost all thermal radiation consists of infrared in mid-infrared region, much longer than in sunlight. Of these natural thermal radiation processes only lightning and natural fires are hot enough to produce much visible energy, thermal infrared radiation also has a maximum emission wavelength, which is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature of object, in accordance with Wiens displacement law. Therefore, the band is often subdivided into smaller sections. Due to the nature of the blackbody radiation curves, typical hot objects, such as exhaust pipes, the three regions are used for observation of different temperature ranges, and hence different environments in space
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Xbox Live
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Xbox Live is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft. It was first made available to the Xbox system in November 2002, an updated version of the service became available for the Xbox 360 console at the systems launch in November 2005, and a further enhanced version was released in 2013 with the Xbox One. The service was extended in 2007 on the Windows platform, named Games for Windows – Live, Microsoft has announced plans to extend Live to other platforms such as handhelds and mobile phones as part of the Live Anywhere initiative. With Microsofts mobile operating system, Windows Phone, full Xbox Live functionality is integrated into new Windows Phones that launched since late 2010. The service shut down for the original Xbox on April 15,2010, as Microsoft developed the original Xbox console, online gaming was designated as one of the key pillars for the greater Xbox strategy. Downloadable content was available, though limited in size due to the narrowband connection, Microsoft, however, hoped that the Xbox would succeed where the Dreamcast had failed. Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates both had a vision of making premium download content and add-ons that would attract new customers. Critics scoffed at it, citing poor broadband adoption at the turn of the century, when the Xbox launched on November 15,2001, the as-yet unnamed online service was destined for a Summer 2002 deployment. Xbox Live was finally given a name at E32002 when the service was unveiled in its entirety, sound-dampened booths and broadband-connected Xbox consoles—featuring an early version of Unreal Championship—demonstrated the service on the show floor. The Epic title was one of the titles for the service. Microsoft announced that 50 Xbox Live titles would be available by the end of 2003, leading up to the launch, Microsoft enlisted several waves of beta testers to improve the service and receive feature feedback. The first wave of beta testers were given Revolt. and NFL Fever to beta test, once beta testing concluded, Microsoft sent these beta testers a translucent orange memory card, a headset carrying case, and a beta tester tshirt with the slogan I have great hands. Microsofts 5000th patent was Live-related and gave Xbox 360 users access to other gamers compete against each other over Xbox Live. The packaging for playable Xbox Live titles on the original Xbox console featured the trademark gold bar underneath the Xbox header, tom Clancys Splinter Cell and Brute Force sported a Live bubble design, as they only featured downloadable content. It was changed later, wherein all Xbox Live titles included the universal gold Live bar, by the time of the Xbox 360, all titles were required to provide at least a limited form of Xbox Live awareness. In July 2004, Xbox Live had reached 1 million online users, in July 2005, Xbox Live had reached 2 million online users. Increased demand from Xbox 360 purchasers was given as the reason for the downtime, on January 18,2008, Microsoft announced Undertow would be offered free to both Gold and Free members for the week starting January 23 through January 27 as compensation. On February 5,2010, Marc Whitten announced that Xbox Live had reached 23 million members, in August 2010, Microsoft announced an increase to the cost of Xbox Live Gold in several countries by 20%, for the first time since its inception
