Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
duced annually to meet that demand? At a penny a tag, what is the total cost of the
tags? Given the size of GDP, is this amount of money going to be an obstacle to their
use on every package offered for sale?
13.
Name three appliances that are candidates for being run by an embedded CPU.
14.
At a certain point in time, a transistor on a chip was 0.1 micron in diameter. According
to Moore's law, how big would a transistor be on next year's model?
15.
It has been shown that Moore's law not only applies to semiconductor density, but it
also predicts the increase in (reasonable) simulation sizes, and the reduction in compu-
tational simulation run-times. First show for a fluid mechanics simulation that takes 4
hours to run on a machine today, that it should only take 1 hour to run on machines
built 3 years from now, and only 15 minutes on machines built 6 years from now.
Then show that for a large simulation that has an estimated run-time of 5 years that it
would complete sooner if we waited 3 years to start the simulation.
16.
In 1959, an IBM 7090 could execute about 500,000 instructions/sec, had a memory of
32,768 36-bit words, and cost $3 million. Compare this to a current computer and de-
termine how much better the current one is by multiplying the ratio of memory sizes
and speeds and then dividing this by the ratio of the prices. Now see what the same
gains would have done to aviation in the same time period. The Boeing 707 was deliv-
ered to the airlines in substantial quantities in 1959. Its speed was 950 km/hr and its
capacity was initially 180 passengers. It cost $4 million. What would the speed, ca-
pacity, and cost of an aircraft now be if it had the same gains as a computer? Clearly,
state your assumptions about speed, memory size, and price.
17.
Developments in the computer industry are often cyclic. Originally, instruction sets
were hardwired, then they were microprogrammed, then RISC machines came along
and they were hardwired again. Originally, computing was centralized on large main-
frame computers. List two developments that demonstrate the cyclic behavior here as
well.
18.
The legal issue of who invented the computer was settled in April 1973 by Judge Earl
Larson, who handled a patent infringement lawsuit filed by the Sperry Rand Corpora-
tion, which had acquired the ENIAC patents. Sperry Rand's position was that every-
body making a computer owed them royalties because it owned the key patents. The
case went to trial in June 1971 and over 30,000 exhibits were entered. The court tran-
script ran to over 20,000 pages. Study this case more carefully using the extensive
information available on the Internet and write a report discussing the technical aspects
of the case. What exactly did Eckert and Mauchley patent and why did the judge feel
their system was based on Atanasoff's earlier work?
19.
Pick the three people you think were most influential in creating modern computer
hardware and write a short report describing their contributions and why you picked
them.
20.
Pick the three people you think were most influential in creating modern computer sys-
tems software and write a short report describing their contributions and why you
picked them.
