Difference between revisions of "CSC103: DT's Notes 1"
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[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348121/ '''Steamboy'''], a Japanese animé by director Katsuhiro Ohtomo (who also directed ''Akira'') is interesting in more than the story of a little boy who is searching for his father, a scientist who has discovered a secret method for controlling high pressured steam. What is interesting is that the movie is science fiction taking place not in the future, but in middle of the 19th century, in a world where steam progress and steam machines are much more advanced than they actually were at that time. One can imagine that some events, and some discoveries where made in the world portrayed in the animated film, and that technology evolved in quite a different direction, bringing with it new machines, either steam-controlled tank-like vehicles, or ships, or flying machines. | [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348121/ '''Steamboy'''], a Japanese animé by director Katsuhiro Ohtomo (who also directed ''Akira'') is interesting in more than the story of a little boy who is searching for his father, a scientist who has discovered a secret method for controlling high pressured steam. What is interesting is that the movie is science fiction taking place not in the future, but in middle of the 19th century, in a world where steam progress and steam machines are much more advanced than they actually were at that time. One can imagine that some events, and some discoveries where made in the world portrayed in the animated film, and that technology evolved in quite a different direction, bringing with it new machines, either steam-controlled tank-like vehicles, or ships, or flying machines. | ||
| − | For computers, we can make the same observation. The reason our laptops today are designed the way they are is really the result of happy accidents in some ways. The way computers are designed, for example, with one processor (more on multi-core processors later), a system of busses, and memory where both data and programs reside side-by-side hasn't changed since '''John von Neumann''' wrote his (incomplete and never officially published) ''First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,''<ref name=" | + | For computers, we can make the same observation. The reason our laptops today are designed the way they are is really the result of happy accidents in some ways. The way computers are designed, for example, with one processor (more on multi-core processors later), a system of busses, and memory where both data and programs reside side-by-side hasn't changed since '''John von Neumann''' wrote his (incomplete and never officially published) ''First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,''<ref name="EDVAC" /> article, in June of 1945. |
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One can argue that if von Neumann hadn't written this report, we may have followed somebody else's brilliant idea for putting together a machine working with electricity, where information is stored and operated on in binary form. Our laptop today could be using a different architecture, and programming them might be a totally different type of problem solving. | One can argue that if von Neumann hadn't written this report, we may have followed somebody else's brilliant idea for putting together a machine working with electricity, where information is stored and operated on in binary form. Our laptop today could be using a different architecture, and programming them might be a totally different type of problem solving. | ||
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| − | + | We are now back to Von Neumann in an effort to understand the concept of the ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture#Von_Neumann_bottleneck Von Neumann Bottleneck]'', a term that appears from time to time in newspaper articles for the general public, such as this article from Steve Lohr in the ''New York Times Bits'' section, titled "Big Data, Speed, and the Future of Computing", published Oct 31 2011<ref name="Lohr">Steve Lohr, Big Data, Speed, and the Future of Computing, ''New York Times Technology'', Oct 31, 2011.</ref> | |
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Revision as of 21:14, 28 September 2013
--© D. Thiebaut 08:10, 30 January 2012 (EST)
