A Guide to Computer Hardware
Welcome to Computer Hardware 101, a basic overview of what-is-what in computers. Hopefully this article will leave you with a basic understanding of the nuts and bolts of your typical computer, and equip you to make informed decisions about what you need in your next computer.
Big iron lessons, Part 2: Reliability and availability: What's the difference?
How do you design a computing system to provide continuous service and to ensure that any failures interrupting service do not result in customer safety issues or loss of customers due to dissatisfaction? Historically, system architects have taken two approaches to answer this question: building highly reliable, fail-safe systems with low probability of failure, or building mostly reliable systems with quick automated recovery. The RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) concept for system design integrates concepts of design for reliability and for availability along with methods to quickly service systems that can't be recovered automatically. This approach is fundamental to systems where the concern is quality of service, customer retention, and due diligence for customer safety.
Chip Interconnects: When 133 MBps is Too Slow
It's all very nice to have incredibly fast processors, ludicrous amounts of disk space, and so much RAM that a comparable amount of magnetic core would outweigh the planet. However, if you can't move data from the <a href=http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-spec14/?ca=dgr-lnxw961Interconnects>CPU to memory</a> or from memory to your disk controller, a blown-out system doesn't do you a lot of good.
Computer Hardware Tutorial
Explains computer hardware from the ground up. Written for beginners who don't know what hardware operates inside their computers.
Dc motor control using IR data communication
Current generation moves into wireless technology. Every one wishes to use remote controls. In this way, the speed of the DC motor is controlled by IR rays. IR rays get modulated with combination of data signal and carrier wave of 38 kHz. At the received end, the modulated signal is demodulated which is given to another controller, connected to the Dc motor driving circuit.
Detecting and Correcting I/O and Memory Errors
SoCs (systems-on-chips) are often deployed in communications, storage, network processing, and mission-critical embedded data processing systems. It is impossible to fully prevent data loss, but engineering due diligence is required to ensure that systems are as safe as practically possible given current data coding methods for error detection and correction. Find out how to build error recovery into your SoCs.
Easing Device Driver Development
Why would anybody want to simulate hardware when developing a device driver? This linux-based article lays out the problem and proposes an approach to solve it. Part 2 of this two-part series, "Debugging simulated hardware on Linux, Part 2: Device driver debugging." gives you a strategy for debugging the complete code flow of your drivers.
Great Moments in Microprocessor History
The evolution of the modern microprocessor is one of many surprising twists and turns. Who invented the first micro? Who had the first 32-bit single-chip design? From the vacuum tube to today's dual-core multithreaded madness, this article shows the defining decisions that brought the contemporary microprocessor to its present-day configuration.
Intelligent Train Engines
The idea is whenever any engine observes a red signal on its track it will start decreasing its speed gradually and stops automatically at some distance from the signal pole. After then when it gets green signal the driver can manually start the train and go on. In the mean time when train has not stopped yet and a red signal becomes green then it crosses the signal pole with low speed and then driver can slowly increase the speed.
It Just Works: UPnP in the Digital Home
Continuing the Journal's exploration of spontaneous networking
technologies, this article presents an introduction to UPnP.
UPnP allows personal computer and consumer electronics devices
to advertise and offer their services to network clients.
Linux on Board: Home Automation Using X10
The X10 protocol is a fairly primitive tool for transmitting data over power lines that allows you to turn things on and off remotely. In this article, Peter Seebach shows how to extend the software capabilities, setup a dynamic web interface and how to use cron for scheduling tasks. All this can be done easily with off-the-shelf hardware and a couple of hundred lines of simple code.
Open Source Robotics Toolkits
Robot simulators can greatly simplify the job of building physical robots. Through simulators, you can test ideas and strategies before putting them into hardware. Luckily, the Linux and open source communities have several options that save you time and money, and can even support direct linkage to hardware platforms. This article introduces you to some of the open source robotics toolkits for Linux, demonstrates their capabilities, and helps you decide which is best for you.
Smartcard Tamper Resistance - a Cautionary Note
An increasing number of systems, from pay-TV to electronic purses, rely on the tamper resistance of smartcards and other security processors. We describe a number of attacks on such systems - some old, some new and some that are simply little known outside the chip testing community. We conclude that trusting tamper resistance is problematic; smartcards are broken routinely, and even a device that was described by a government signals agency as `the most secure processor generally available' turns out to be vulnerable. Designers of secure systems should consider the consequences with care.
SoC Concurrent Development
The old silo method of chip development, with hardware and firmware developers barely interacting with each other, won't cut it in today's fast-moving industry. Learn about the development tools and processes that speed system on a chip design and get all your developers working together effectively.
SoCs Enable Digital Content Revolution
In this article learn how SoC architectures could significantly accelerate digital video processing and enable the digital video revolution. In addition Sam Siewert shows how SoCs can uniquely accelerate processing.
Standards and specs: The PCI bus
The widely adopted PCI standard has defeated a large number of competing standards in the marketplace. This month's Standards and specs looks at how the PCI bus won, what the effects of its dominance have been, and what might happen next.
The ATX Case and Power Supply
The recent blade.org announcement heralds that IBM and Intel are looking to standardize blade hardware designs, allowing blade systems from multiple vendors to work together. It's no surprise that Intel is interested in this -- its own ATX standard has been a massive success. This article looks at the history of ATX and some of the lessons learned about power supply and chassis standardization.
The Future of Computing
This is an exciting time in which to live. With scientific breakthroughs being made every day, it is awe inspiring to speculate the future of computing technology. What will today's scientific discoveries mean to tomorrow's computers? In this article, we will take a light look at quantum computing -- how a structure as simple as four atoms can revolutionize computing!
The Heath Robinson Rube Goldberg Computer
Imagine a computer formed from a mixture of technologies ranging from relays to fluidic logic. Now imagine being able to create your own single masterpiece of such a computer, in the technology of your choice, using the Internet to run it in conjunction with other portions of the system created around the world! In Part 1 of the HRRG series learn the creation of just such a computing engine and how you can be involved.
The PC's keyboard.
Why would you want to interface the Keyboard? The IBM keyboard can be a cheap alternative to a keyboard on a Microprocessor development system. Or maybe you want a remote terminal, just couple it with a LCD Module. This article gives you the basics.
The PCI Bus Ride
The widely adopted PCI standard has defeated a large number of competing standards in the marketplace. This article takes a looks at how the PCI bus won, what the effects of its dominance have been, and what might happen next.
The Year 2004 in Microprocessors
From spintronics to clockless CPUs, 2004 was a year of process and research in the microprocessor industry. As a way to transition into the new year, this article offers a month-by-month look at the highlights of the 2004 microprocessor timeline.
Thermal Paste Comparison
This article compares the performance of the top rated thermal pastes, so that you can make informed decisions about what will go into your next computer system!
Top 10 things you should be doing to maintain your computer
Everyone loves computers when they work. Everyone screams at them when they don’t. Here’s ten ways to keep your computer running smoothly into its old age. While I can’t promise that these tips will keep your computer from ever having problems, it will at least help prevent them, and make recovery easier when they do occur.
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