Computing

By the early 1990s, Dell became one of the leading computer retailers. The Video Display Module marks the first implementation of a memory-mapped alphanumeric video display for personal computers. Introduced at the Altair Convention in Albuquerque in March 1976, the visual display module enabled the use of personal computers for interactive games. Designed by Don Lancaster, the TV Typewriter is an easy-to-build kit that can display alphanumeric information on an ordinary television set.

Programme Length

In the third level, you’ll have the opportunity to study specialised modules depending on your specialist pathway and bring your knowledge and skills together with a final individual project — developing your own software. Harkening back to the hobbyist era of personal computing in the 1970s, Arduino begins as a project of the Interaction Design Institute, Ivrea, Italy. Each credit card-sized Arduino board consisted of an inexpensive microcontroller and signal connectors which made Arduinos ideal for use in any application connecting to or monitoring the outside world. The Arduino used a Java-based integrated development environment and users could access a library of programs, called “Wiring,” that allowed for simplified programming. Arduino soon became the main computer platform of the worldwide “Maker” movement. Apple's Macintosh Portable meets with little success in the marketplace and leads to a complete redesign of Apple's line of portable computers.

Review the fundamentals of digital data representation, computer components, internet protocols, programming skills, algorithms, and data analysis. While laptops aren't as readily upgradable as PCs, they make up for this with their easy portability. Some laptops often match or rival desktops in terms of power, memory, and capabilities, all in one small, lightweight package. If you regularly work outside of the office, a quality laptop gives you the power of a desktop in a compact footprint.

unplugged Activities: Computer Science Without The Computer

The MOS 6502 was introduced at a conference in San Francisco at a cost of $25, far less than comparable processors from Intel and Motorola, leading some attendees to believe that the company was perpetrating a hoax. The chip quickly became popular with designers of early personal computers like the Apple II and Commodore PET, as well as game consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System. The 6502 and its progeny are still used today, usually in embedded applications. The Control Data Corporation performs up to 3 million instructions per second —three times faster than that of its closest competitor, the IBM 7030 supercomputer.

Naval Tactical Data System Introduced

Before its decommissioning in 1952, the SSEC produced the moon position tables used in early planning of the 1969 Apollo XII moon landing. These tables were later confirmed by using more modern computers for the actual flights. The SSEC was one of the last of the generation of 'super calculators' to be built using electromechanical technology.

Mainframe computers were characterized by having large storage capabilities, fast components, and powerful computational abilities. They were highly reliable, and, because they frequently served vital needs in an organization, they were sometimes designed with redundant components that let them survive partial failures. Because they were complex systems, they were operated by a staff of systems programmers, who alone had access to the computer. Other users submitted “batch jobs” to be run one at a time on the mainframe.

The banking industry rushed to adopt the machine, built to run during repair or expansion. The Tandem-16 eventually led to the “Non-Stop” series of systems, which were used for early ATMs and to monitor stock trades. A joint project of England’s Manchester University, Ferranti Computers, and Plessey, Atlas comes online nine years after Manchester’s computer lab begins exploring transistor technology.

With a screen resolution of up to 400 pixels-per-inch , Retina displays approached the limit of pixel visibility to the human eye. The display also used In Plane Switching technology, which allowed for a wider viewing angle and improved color accuracy. The Retina display became standard on most of the iPad, iPhone, MacBook, and Apple Watch product lines. Named in honor of the space shuttle which broke-up on re-entry, the Columbia supercomputer is an important part of NASA's return to manned spaceflight after the 2003 disaster. Columbia was used in space vehicle analysis, including studying the Columbia disaster, but also in astrophysics, weather and ocean modeling.

It is for beginners in computer science and people interested in a more formal study of computer science. This course covers fundamental concepts that can be applied to any software or computer system, and how to apply concepts to solve everyday problems. Computer science is considered by many of its practitioners to be a foundational science - one which makes other knowledge and achievements possible.

The ISA is a logical representative encoding of the basic set of distinct operations that a computer architecture may perform, and by which application programs specify the useful work to be done. At the machine level the hardware system directly interprets and executes a sequence or partially ordered set of these basic operations. This is true for all computer cores, from those few in the smallest mobile phones to potentially millions making up the world's largest supercomputers. High performance computer architecture extends structure to a hierarchy of functional elements, whether small and limited in capability or possibly entire processor cores themselves. In this chapter many different classes of structure are presented, each exploiting concurrency in its own particular way.

Even after computers were commercialized around the 1950s, most computers were “hosted” in highly secured data processing centers, and users accessed the host computers through “dumb” terminals. By the late 1960s, IBM became a dominant vendor of large-scale computers called a “mainframe” host. In the mid-1970s, minicomputers started challenging mainframe computers. In many cases, minicomputers could host applications and perform the same functions as mainframes, but with less cost.

The PC Jr. is marketed as a home computer but is too expensive and limited in performance to compete with many of the other machines in that market. It offered increased performance and storage capacity over the original IBM PC and sold for about $4,000. It also included more memory and accommodated high-density 1.2-megabyte 5 1/4-inch floppy disks.