Why do you need to learn how a computer works?

• Computers have infiltrated our world and have some role in controlling almost everything with
which we interact on a daily basis.
 Cell phones, Appliances, Cars, Traffic Lights

Examples:

2001 – Recent data: In the US, traffic volume has increased 3 times more than the population growth at
a cost of $75 Billion in lost revenue each year. So, when you consider the cost of having millions of
vehicles stuck in traffic every day, a more accurate system seems long overdue.

1995 - Texas Department of Transportation's (TxDOT) "smart highway" project called TransGuide
became operational on July 26, 1995. TransGuide, an Intelligent Transportation System, was designed
to provide information to motorists about traffic conditions, such as accidents, congestion, and
construction. With the use of cameras, message signs, and fiber optics, TransGuide can detect travel
times and respond rapidly to accidents and emergencies. Partners in the TransGuide project include
TxDOT, the City of San Antonio (police/fire/EMS/traffic), and VIA Metropolitan Transit.

1998 - Traffic.com, a Wayne, Pa., company founded in 1998

The system is intended to make radio traffic reports more accurate-but is also expected have far more
interesting and valuable uses.
• The network gets data from 600 sensors posted atop 20- to 30-foot poles positioned along major
commuter routes.
• The sensors use microwave radar to measure the speed, number, and density of vehicles that
pass by in each lane. They can also distinguish between cars and trucks.
• Solar generators with batteries keep the sensors going even in cloudy climates.
• Every 60 seconds, their wireless modems send collected information to a main data center in
Philadelphia
• Installation of a sensor network costs roughly $3 million per metropolitan area.

INTRO:
• Law enforcement – Police Force, FBI, CIA, (for “24” watchers , CTU)
• Education – CIO of local school district
• Art – Computer Graphics in Advertising, Web Design, Architecture
• Law – recent anti-trust lawsuit - settlement payment of $775 M from Microsoft to IBM.
• Business – Finance, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service
• Science: Biology, chemistry, genealogy (human genome project)
• Sports – example: Curt Shilling’s batter research
• 100 Best Places to Work for IT professionals

•
(From an eSchool News wire service report - July 6, 2005)
 According to the Labor Department, the fastest growing jobs through 2012 include data
communications analysts, health information technicians, and computer software engineers.
 Airplane: Wright Bros. 10 mph vs. Blackbird SR-71 Reconnaissance Jet. SR-71 is 227.5 times faster.

HUMAN: Roger Bannister broke mile record on 5/6/1954, ran 15.038 mph. In 1999, the record was
set again at a pace of 16.134 mph or a factor of 1.07 better than the 1954 record.

All of the above show that improvements were made in each area. However, using analysis to
compare the results gives us perspective of the significance of each accomplishment. Facts are
interesting; turning facts into information is valuable.

Now let’s apply analytical thinking to get a better feeling for exactly how much computer performance
has improved. Remember the runner who improved on the world record by a factor of 1.07. In human
terms, if that runner could improve just 21 million times, he could run the mile in 11.4 microseconds.
So, what does that mean??

• The runner could run 3000 miles before anyone would notice he moved.
• The sound from the starters gun would still be inside the gun 11.4 microseconds after the trigger
was pulled.
• Light travels only twice as fast.

Now consider that computer performance has increased 56 billion times over a 50-year span!

Review Number Scaling:

•100 = 10x10
•1000 = 10x100
•1,000,000 = 10x1,000
•1 Billion = 1000 Millions
•1 Trillion = 1000 Billions
•1 Quadrillion = 1 Billion Millions
• Time to count to 1 Quadrillion = 1 count per second = 86,400 per day; 1 Qdr./86,400 =
11,574,074,074 days = 31,710,000 years

FYI:
• 8 Racks with (2 x 16) x 32 compute nodes (total 8192)
• Compute node: dual processor
• Processortype: 32-bit PowerPC 440 core 700 MHz
• Overall peak performance: 45.6 Teraflops
• Linpack: 280.6 Teraflops
• Main memory: 512 Mbytes (aggregate 4.1 TB)
• I/O Nodes: 288
• Networks:
 Three-dimensonal torus (compute nodes)
 Global tree / Collective network (compute nodes, I/O nodes)
 Gigabit ethernet / Functional network (I/O Nodes)

TOP500 List (Supercomputer Sites):

 • Only six of the TOP10 systems from November 2004 are still large enough to hold on to a TOP10
position, four new systems entered the top tier.
• The new and previous No. 1 is DOE's IBM BlueGene/L system, installed at DOE’s Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). It has doubled in size (again) and has now achieved a record
Linpack performance of 280.6 TFlop/s. It is still the only system ever to exceed the 100 TFlop/s
mark.

By Kevin Kelly, Wired Magazine; August 2005

“The scope of the Web today is hard to fathom. The total number of Web pages, including those that
are dynamically created upon request and document files available through links, exceeds 600 billion.
That's 100 pages per person alive.

How could we create so much, so fast, so well? In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a
trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the
world's population. That remarkable achievement was not in anyone's 10-year plan.

Today, at any Net terminal, you can get: an amazing variety of music and video, an evolving
encyclopedia, weather forecasts, help wanted ads, satellite images of anyplace on Earth, up-to-the-
minute news from around the globe, tax forms, TV guides, road maps with driving directions, real-time
stock quotes, telephone numbers, real estate listings with virtual walk-throughs, pictures of just about
anything, sports scores, places to buy almost anything, records of political contributions, library catalogs,
appliance manuals, live traffic reports, archives to major newspapers - all wrapped up in an interactive
index that really works.

This view is spookily godlike. You can switch your gaze of a spot in the world from map to satellite to 3-D
just by clicking. Recall the past? It's there. Or listen to the daily complaints and travails of almost anyone
who blogs (and doesn't everyone?). I doubt angels have a better view of humanity. “
Spyware – Programs that record your surfing behavior and/or keystrokes and transmit the data to the
collector’s database.

• Viruses - Programs that piggyback on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a
program such as a spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet program runs, the virus runs
too where it can reproduce
(by attaching to other programs) or wreak system havoc.
• E-mail Viruses – An E-mail virus is transmitted via e-mail messages and usually replicates
automatically by mailing a copy of itself to dozens of people in the victim's e-mail address book.
• Worms - Software that use computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. A copy of the
worm scans the network for another machine that has a specific security hole. It copies itself to the
new machine using the security hole, and then starts replicating from there, as well.
• Trojan Horses – A software program that claims to do one thing (it may claim to be a game) but
instead does damage when you run it (it may erase your hard disk). Trojan horses have no way to
replicate automatically.
Hardware – Physical components of the computer.
Software – Programs written to control what the computer does.
CPU – Central Processing Unit (Brain)
Disk – Hard Drive, long-term or “secondary” memory
Network – Means for computers to communicate electronically.
Batch Processing – Computers could run only one program at a time.
Multi-Tasking or Timeshare – Computers that permit more than one person to use its resources (CPU,
Memory, etc.).
MIPS/FLOPS – Million instructions per second, Floating Point operations per second.
Kilo – Abbreviation for 1,000
GUI – Graphical User Interface (a feature of all windows-based systems)
Mega – Abbr. For 1 million
Giga – Abbr. For 1 Billion
Tera – Abbr. For 1 Trillion
Nano – Abbr. For 1 billionth
ENIAC – Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator
IBM – International Business Machines
DEC – Digital Equipment Corporation
Apple – Apple Computer
RFID – Radio Frequency Identification – Devices that transmit an electronic signal to track packages or
inventory.

What was the first computer?

• 500 BC - Evidence of the abacus, the world's first calculating machine, exists from as far back as
2,500 years ago in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.

Why were computers originally developed? What problems did they solve?
• Assist w/ complex or repetitive calculations.
 Before digital computers were available to the labs, "computer" was a job title. Parallel
computing was done by rows and columns of mathematicians. The applications, which arose
mostly from the Manhattan Project (Atom Bomb), included design of shielding for nuclear
reactors.
• Automate routine business functions: Accounting, Project Mgmt
• Solve ultra-complex computational equations. Super-computing
• Enhance communications: Gov’t, Bus., Personal, Worldwide

1940s:
• 1941 – Japanese invade Pearl Harbor
• 1945 – Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
• 1949 - George Orwell's book called Nineteen Eighty Four depicted a future society of
comprehensive surveillance (“Big Brother”) where citizens were forced to conform to the rules of
the new society.
• President: Harry Truman – 1945-53
• Top Song: 1946 - Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - Vaughn Monroe

1940s:
1946 - ENIAC was one of the world’s first electronic computers.
• Contracted by the Military Ordinance Department and Built at Penn - On May 31, 1943, John
Mauchly and J Presper Eckert started designing the ENIAC.
• One year to design, 18 months and $500,000 tax dollars to build. The ENIAC was put to work by
the military execute calculations trajectories for large caliber guns, for the design of a hydrogen
bomb, weather prediction, cosmic-ray studies, thermal ignition, random-number studies and
wind-tunnel design.
• ENIAC had 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual
switches and 5 million soldered joints. It covered 1800 square feet, weighed 30 tons and
consumed 160 kilowatts of electrical power. There was even a rumor that when turned on the
ENIAC caused the city of Philadelphia to experience brownouts, however, this was first reported
incorrectly by the Philadelphia Bulletin in 1946 and since then has become an urban myth.
• In one second, the ENIAC (one thousand times faster than any other calculating machine to date)
could perform 5,000 additions (5 KIPS), 357 multiplications or 38 divisions (FLOPS)

• Programming ENIAC entailed flipping switches and moving plug cords.

1940’s Data Storage

Even before the first commercial electronic computers appeared in 1951, "mass" storage - although
minuscule by today's standards - was a necessity. As early as the mid-1800s, punch cards were used
to provide input to early calculators and other machines.

The 1940s ushered in the decade when vacuum tubes were used for storage and the ENIAC could hold
20, 10-DIGIT NUMBERS in memory.

ENIAC could discriminate the sign of a number, compare quantities for equality, add, subtract,
multiply, divide, and extract square roots.
The primary aim of the designers was to achieve speed by making ENIAC as all-electronic as possible.
The only mechanical elements in the final product were actually external to the calculator itself. These
were an IBM card reader for input, a card punch for output, and the 1,500 associated relays.
Vacuum Tubes: (FYI Only, NOT TESTED)

Vacuum tubes, or thermionic valves, are arrangements of electrodes in a vacuum within an insulating,
temperature-resistant envelope. Although the envelope was classically glass, power tubes often use
ceramic and metal. The electrodes were attached to leads which passed through the envelope, in a way
that was sealed air tight. On most tubes, the leads were designed to plug into tube sockets for easy
replacement.
The simplest vacuum tubes resemble incandescent light bulbs, in that they have a filament sealed in a
glass envelope, which has been evacuated of all air. When hot, the filament releases electrons into the
vacuum, a process called thermionic emission. The resulting negatively-charged cloud of electrons is
called a space charge. These electrons will be drawn to a metal plate inside the envelope if the plate,
also called the anode, is positively charged. This results in a current of electrons flowing from filament to
plate. Obviously this does not work the other way round, because the plate is not heated, so we have a
diode, a device that conducts current only in one direction.
 1940s:
What happened in the 1940’s that drove computer innovation?
• 1941 – Japanese invade Pearl Harbor
• 1945 – Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
• 1949 - George Orwell's book called Nineteen Eighty Four depicted a future society of
comprehensive surveillance (“Big Brother”) where citizens were forced to conform to the rules of
the new society.
• President: Harry Truman – 1945-53
• Top Song: 1946 - Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - Vaughn Monroe

1945 – Vannevar Bush – Article - “As We May Think”

• The article was originally published in the July 1945 issue of The Atlantic Monthly : Bush calls for a
new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge .
• Science Advisor to president Roosevelt during WW2)
• Proposed a conceptual machine called the “Memex” that could:
 Store vast amounts of information
 Give users the ability to create information trails, links of related texts and illustrations,
which can be stored and used for future reference.

TODAY? See Article By Kevin Kelly, Wired Magazine; August 2005. What did Vannevar Bush in his
1945 Article?