Week 2 Flashcards
What is Moore’s Law
Founder of Intel said in the ‘60’s that the number of transistors in an integrated system double every 2 years.
-> Computational power (speed) of computers doubles every 2 years
What are consequences of Moore’s Law?
- Technical development has autonomous (independend of supply/demand) growth
- Basis of the explosive growth in computing
- Selfulling profecy: they aim to achieve this now
What are similarities to Moore’s Law?
- Chessboard Metaphor
- Data Storage Cost
- Explosion of the net
What is the network effect?
Usefulness increases if there are more connections (of nodes)
What is meant by Von Neumann Architecture?
Basic architecture of computers that says there is a distinction between control unit and memory.
- Memory is used to store data and software
- Powerful and flexible as softwre can be changed and modified.
What are the differences between RAM and Disk (storage)
- CPU can only read into memory
- Memory is volatile -> it does not store data
- Memory is quicker in data processing
- Memory is more expensive
What is an operating system?
- Software installed on a compute that gives it an infrastructure;
- The infrastructure can be used to run applications
What are the two views on OS’s?
- Device Handler
- Abstraction Layer
What is meant by an OS as a device handler?
The OS manages each of the devices in hardware.
What is meant by an OS as abstraction layer?
- Provides access to the hardware for the user;
- The user can use the computer through the OS;
- The OS abstracts from the hardware and gives and interface to the user.
What is a bus?
Communication system that transfers data between components inside the computer OR between computers
What is commodization of computers?
Becoming part of our everyday life: Laptops, mobile devices, wearables, IoT
-> There are razor thin margins for manufactures
Why is apple not considered a commodity
- Does not use open standards;
- Products are considered superior;
- Not easily copied;
What is ASCII?
Standard of Wrepresentation of characters. Every letter has it’s own code with 0’s and 1’s
What is a parity bit?
An extra bit to the code to check for errors. In the first stage of the ASCII you decide if the amount of 1’s should be even or odd. If you decide it should be odd, you can check every character code and add a 1 if the number of 1’s is even; or add a 0 if the number of 1’s is odd.
