KnowLeDgE
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To Know the information Let's Dig with Eagerness
AMD
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)
Products:
Microprocessors
Motherboard
chipsets
Graphics
processing units
Random-access
memory
TV
tuner cards
Advanced
Micro Devices, Inc. is an American multinational semiconductor company based in
Austin, Texas, United States, that develops computer processors and related
technologies for commercial and consumer markets. While initially it
manufactured its own processors, the company became fabless after GlobalFoundries
was spun off in 2009. AMD's main products include microprocessors, motherboard
chipsets, and embedded processors and graphics processors for servers,
workstations and personal computers, and embedded systems applications.
AMD is the
second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture
and also one of the largest suppliers of graphics processing units. It also
owns 8.6% of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory.
AMD is the only significant rival to Intel in the central
processor (CPU) market for (x86 based) personal computers. Since acquiring ATI
in 2006, AMD and its competitor Nvidia have dominated the discrete
graphics processor unit (GPU) market.
Advanced
Micro Devices was founded on May 1, 1969, by a group of former executives from
Fairchild Semiconductor, including Jerry Sanders III, Ed Turney, John Carey,
Sven Simonsen, Jack Gifford and three members from Gifford's team, Frank Botte,
Jim Giles, and Larry Stenger. The company began as a producer of logic chips, and
then entered the RAM chip business in 1975. That same year, it introduced a
reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 8080 microprocessor. During this period,
AMD also designed and produced a series of bit-slice processor elements
(Am2900, Am29116, and Am293xx) which were used in various minicomputer designs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices
INTEL
Intel
Corporation is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation
headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Intel is the world's largest and
highest valued semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor
of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most personal
computers. Intel Corporation, founded on July 18, 1968, is a portmanteau of
Integrated Electronics (the fact that "intel" is the term for
intelligence information was also quite suitable).
Intel also
makes motherboard chipsets, network interface controllers and integrated
circuits, flash memory, graphic chips, embedded processors and other devices
related to communications and computing.
Founded by
semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore and widely associated with
the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove, Intel combines advanced
chip design capability with a leading-edge manufacturing capability. Though
Intel was originally known primarily to engineers and technologists, its "Intel
Inside" advertising campaign of the 1990s made it a household name, along
with its Pentium processor.
Intel was an
early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, and this represented the
majority of its business until 1981. Although Intel created the world's first
commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the success of the
personal computer (PC) that this became its primary business.
Intel has
also begun research in electrical transmission and generation. Intel has
recently introduced a 3-D transistor that improves performance and energy efficiency.
Intel has begun mass-producing this 3-D transistor, named the Tri-Gate
transistor, with their 22 nm process, which is currently used in their 3rd
generation core processors initially released on April 29, 2012. In 2011,
SpectraWatt Inc., a solar cell spinoff of Intel, filed for bankruptcy under
Chapter 11. Recently Intel unveiled its brand new fourth generation Intel Core
processors (Haswell) in an event named Computex in Taipei.
The Open
Source Technology Center at Intel hosts PowerTOP and LatencyTOP, and supports
other open-source projects such as Wayland, Intel Array Building Blocks,
Threading Building Blocks (TBB), and Xen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel
TELEVISION
Television,
or TV for short, (from French télévision, meaning "television"; from
Ancient Greek τῆλε (tèle), meaning "far", and Latin visio, meaning
"sight") is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving
moving images that can be monochrome (black-and-white) or colored, with or
without accompanying sound. "Television" may also refer specifically
to a television set, television program, or television transmission.
Commercially
available since the late 1920s, the television set has become commonplace in
homes, businesses and institutions, particularly as a vehicle for advertising,
a source of entertainment, and news. Since the 1950s, television has been the
main medium for molding public opinion. Since the 1970s, the availability of
video cassettes, laserdiscs, DVDs and now Blu-ray Discs have resulted in the
television set frequently being used for viewing recorded as well as broadcast
material. In recent years, Internet television has seen the rise of television
available via the Internet through services such as iPlayer and Hulu.
In 2009 78
percent of the world's households owned at least one television set, an
increase of 5% over 2003. Although other forms such as closed-circuit
television (CCTV) are in use, the most common usage of the medium is for
broadcast television, which was modeled on the existing radio broadcasting systems
developed in the 1920s, and uses high-powered radio-frequency transmitters to
broadcast the television signal to individual TV receivers.
The
broadcast television system is typically disseminated via radio transmissions
on designated channels in the 54–890 MHz frequency band. Signals are now often
transmitted with stereo or surround sound in many countries. Until the 2000s,
broadcast TV programs were generally transmitted as an analog television signal
but during the decade several countries went almost exclusively digital.
A standard
television set comprises multiple internal electronic circuits, including those
for receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual display device which
lacks a tuner is properly called a video monitor, rather than a television. A
television system may use different technical standards such as digital
television (DTV) and high-definition television (HDTV). Television systems are
also used for surveillance, industrial process control, and guiding of weapons,
in places where direct observation is difficult or dangerous. Some studies have
found a link between infancy exposure to television and ADHD.
In its early
stages of development, television employed a combination of optical, mechanical
and electronic technologies to capture, transmit and display a visual image. By
the late 1920s, however, those employing only optical and electronic
technologies were being explored. All modern television systems relied on the
latter, although the knowledge gained from the work on electromechanical
systems was crucial in the development of fully electronic television.
The first
images transmitted electrically were sent by early mechanical fax machines,
including the pantelegraph, developed in the late nineteenth century. The
concept of electrically powered transmission of television images in motion was
first sketched in 1878 as the telephonoscope, shortly after the invention of
the telephone. At the time, it was imagined by early science fiction authors,
that someday that light could be transmitted over copper wires, as sounds were.
The idea of
using scanning to transmit images was put to actual practical use in 1881 in
the pantelegraph, through the use of a pendulum-based scanning mechanism. From
this period forward, scanning in one form or another has been used in nearly
every image transmission technology to date, including television. This is the
concept of "rasterization", the process of converting a visual image
into a stream of electrical pulses.
In 1884, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a 23-year-old university student in Germany, patented the first electromechanical television system which employed a scanning disk, a spinning disk with a series of holes spiraling toward the center, for rasterization. The holes were spaced at equal angular intervals such that, in a single rotation, the disk would allow light to pass through each hole and onto a light-sensitive selenium sensor which produced the electrical pulses. As an image was focused on the rotating disk, each hole captured a horizontal "slice" of the whole image.
Nipkow's
design would not be practical until advances in amplifier tube technology
became available. Later designs would use a rotating mirror-drum scanner to
capture the image and a cathode ray tube (CRT) as a display device, but moving
images were still not possible, due to the poor sensitivity of the selenium
sensors. In 1907, Russian scientist Boris Rosing became the first inventor to
use a CRT in the receiver of an experimental television system. He used
mirror-drum scanning to transmit simple geometric shapes to the CRT.
Using a
Nipkow disk, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird succeeded in demonstrating the
transmission of moving silhouette images in London in 1925, and of moving, monochromatic
images in 1926. Baird's scanning disk produced an image of 30 lines resolution,
just enough to discern a human face, from a double spiral of Photographic
lenses. This demonstration by Baird is generally agreed to be the world's first
true demonstration of television, albeit a mechanical form of television no
longer in use.
Remarkably,
in 1927, Baird also invented the world's first video recording system,
"Phonovision": by modulating the output signal of his TV camera down
to the audio range, he was able to capture the signal on a 10-inch wax audio
disc using conventional audio recording technology. A handful of Baird's
'Phonovision' recordings survive and these were finally decoded and rendered
into viewable images in the 1990s using modern digital signal-processing
technology.
In 1926,
Hungarian engineer Kálmán Tihanyi designed a television system utilizing fully
electronic scanning and display elements, and employing the principle of
"charge storage" within the scanning (or "camera") tube.
On 25
December 1926, Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated a television system with a
40-line resolution that employed a CRT display at Hamamatsu Industrial High
School in Japan. This was the first working example of a fully electronic television
receiver. Takayanagi did not apply for a patent.
By
1927, Russian inventor Léon Theremin developed a mirror-drum-based television
system which used interlacing to achieve an image resolution of 100 lines. In
1927, Philo Farnsworth made the world's first working television system with
electronic scanning of both the pickup and display devices, which he first
demonstrated to the press on 1 September 1928.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices
Radio
Radio is the
wireless transmission of signals through free space by electromagnetic
radiation of a frequency significantly below that of visible light, in the
radio frequency range, from about 3 kHz to 300 GHz. These waves are called
radio waves. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating
electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space.
Information,
such as sound, is carried by systematically changing (modulating) some property
of the radiated waves, such as their amplitude, frequency, phase, or pulse
width. When radio waves strike an electrical conductor, the oscillating fields
induce an alternating current in the conductor. The information in the waves
can be extracted and transformed back into its original form.
The
etymology of "radio" or "radiotelegraphy" reveals that it
was called "wireless telegraphy", which was shortened to
"wireless" in Britain. The prefix radio- in the sense of wireless transmission
was first recorded in the word radioconductor, a description provided by the
French physicist Édouard Branly in 1897. It is based on the verb to radiate (in
Latin "radius" means "spoke of a wheel, beam of light,
ray").
The word
"radio" also appears in a 1907 article by Lee De Forest. It was
adopted by the United States Navy in 1912, to distinguish radio from several
other wireless communication technologies, such as the photophone. The term
became common by the time of the first commercial broadcasts in the United
States in the 1920s. (The noun "broadcasting" itself came from an
agricultural term, meaning "scattering seeds widely.") The term was
adopted by other languages in Europe and Asia. British Commonwealth countries
continued to commonly use the term "wireless" until the mid-20th
century, though the magazine of the BBC in the UK has been called Radio Times
ever since it was first published in the early 1920s.
In recent
years the more general term "wireless" has gained renewed popularity
through the rapid growth of short-range computer networking, e.g., Wireless
Local Area Network (WLAN), Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, as well as mobile telephony,
e.g., GSM and UMTS. Today, the term "radio" specifies the actual type
of transceiver device or chip, whereas "wireless" refers to the lack
of physical connections; one talk about radio transceivers, but other talks
about wireless devices and wireless sensor networks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio
SATTELITE
INTRODUCTION
In the
context of spaceflight, a satellite is an artificial object which has been
intentionally placed into orbit. Such objects are sometimes called artificial
satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon.
The world's
first artificial satellite, the Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Union in
1957. Since then, thousands of satellites have been launched into orbit around
the Earth. Some satellites, notably space stations, have been launched in parts
and assembled in orbit. Artificial satellites originate from more than 50
countries and have used the satellite launching capabilities of ten nations. A
few hundred satellites are currently operational, whereas thousands of unused
satellites and satellite fragments orbit the Earth as space debris. A few space
probes have been placed into orbit around other bodies and become artificial
satellites to the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Vesta, Eros, and
the Sun.
Satellites
are used for a large number of purposes. Common types include military and
civilian Earth observation satellites, communications satellites, navigation
satellites, weather satellites, and research satellites. Space stations and
human spacecraft in orbit are also satellites. Satellite orbits vary greatly,
depending on the purpose of the satellite, and are classified in a number of
ways. Well-known (overlapping) classes include low Earth orbit, polar orbit,
and geostationary orbit.
About 6,600
satellites have been launched. The latest estimates are that 3,600 remain in
orbit. Of those, about 1000 are operational; the rest have lived out their
useful lives and are part of the space debris. Approximately 500 operational
satellites are in low-Earth orbit, 50 are in medium-Earth orbit (at 20,000 km),
the rest are in geostationary orbit (at 36,000 km).
Satellites
are propelled by rockets to their orbits. Usually the launch vehicle itself is
a rocket lifting off from a launch pad on land. In a minority of cases
satellites are launched at sea (from a submarine or a mobile maritime platform)
or aboard a plane (see air launch to orbit).
Satellites
are usually semi-independent computer-controlled systems. Satellite subsystems
attend many tasks, such as power generation, thermal control, telemetry,
attitude control and orbit control.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite
INTEGERATED
CIRCUIT
An
integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC,
a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small plate
("chip") of semiconductor material, normally silicon. This can be
made much smaller than a discrete circuit made from independent components.
Integrated
circuits are used in virtually all electronic equipment today and have
revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones, and other
digital home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern
societies, made possible by the low cost of producing integrated circuits.
ICs can be
made very compact, having up to several billion transistors and other
electronic components in an area the size of a fingernail. The width of each
conducting line in a circuit can be made smaller and smaller as the technology
advances; in 2008 it dropped below 100 nanometers and in 2013 it is expected to
be in the tens of nanometers.
ICs were
made possible by experimental discoveries showing that semiconductor devices
could perform the functions of vacuum tubes and by mid-20th-century technology
advancements in semiconductor device fabrication. The integration of large
numbers of tiny transistors into a small chip was an enormous improvement over
the manual assembly of circuits using discrete electronic components. The
integrated circuits mass production capability, reliability, and building-block
approach to circuit design ensured the rapid adoption of standardized
integrated circuits in place of designs using discrete transistors.
There are
two main advantages of ICs over discrete circuits: cost and performance. Cost
is low because the chips, with all their components, are printed as a unit by
photolithography rather than being constructed one transistor at a time.
Furthermore, much less material is used to construct a packaged IC die than to
construct a discrete circuit. Performance is high because the components switch
quickly and consume little power (compared to their discrete counterparts) as a
result of the small size and close proximity of the components. As of 2012,
typical chip areas range from a few square millimeters to around 450 mm2,
with up to 9 million transistors per mm2.
An
integrated circuit is defined as a circuit in which all or some of the circuit
elements are inseparably associated and electrically interconnected so that it
is considered to be indivisible for the purposes of construction and commerce. Circuits
meeting this definition can be constructed using many different technologies –
see for example thin-film transistor, thick film technology, or hybrid
integrated circuit. However, in general usage integrated circuit has since come
to refer to the single-piece circuit construction originally known as a
monolithic integrated circuit.
Power source (battery or solar cell)
Keypad - consists of keys used to input numbers and function commands (addition, multiplication, square-root, etc.)
Processor chip (microprocessor) contains:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit
SEMICONDUCTOR
Semiconductor
device fabrication is the process used to create the integrated circuits that
are present in everyday electrical and electronic devices. It is a
multiple-step sequence of photolithographic and chemical processing steps
during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer made of pure
semiconducting material. Silicon is almost always used, but various compound semiconductors
are used for specialized applications.
The entire
manufacturing process, from start to packaged chips ready for shipment, takes
six to eight weeks and is performed in highly specialized facilities referred
to as fabs.
Semiconductor manufacturing processes
10 µm – 1971 3 µm – 1975 1.5 µm – 1982 1
µm – 1985
800 nm – 1989 600 nm – 1994 350 nm – 1995 250
nm – 1997
180 nm – 1999 130 nm – 2002 90 nm – 2004 65
nm – 2006
45 nm – 2008 32 nm – 2010 22 nm – 2012 14 nm – 2014
10 nm – est. 2015 7
nm – est. 2017 5 nm – est. 2019
When feature
widths were far greater than about 10 micrometres, purity was not the issue
that it is today in device manufacturing. As devices became more integrated,
cleanrooms became even cleaner. Today, the fabs are pressurized with filtered
air to remove even the smallest particles, which could come to rest on the
wafers and contribute to defects. The workers in a semiconductor fabrication
facility are required to wear cleanroom suits to protect the devices from human
contamination.
Semiconductor
device manufacturing has spread from Texas and California in the 1960s to the
rest of the world, such as Europe, Middle East, and Asia. It is a global
business today. The leading semiconductor manufacturers typically have facilities
all over the world.
Intel,
the world's largest manufacturer, has facilities in Europe and Asia as well as
the U.S. Other top manufacturers include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Company (Taiwan), United Microelectronics Corporation (Taiwan),
STMicroelectronics (Europe), Analog Devices (US), Integrated Device Technology
(US), Atmel (US/Europe), Freescale Semiconductor (US), Samsung (Korea), Texas
Instruments (US), IBM (US), GlobalFoundries (Germany, Singapore, New York),
Toshiba (Japan), NEC Electronics (Japan), Infineon (Europe, US, Asia), Renesas
(Japan), Fujitsu (Japan/US), NXP Semiconductors (Europe and US), Micron
Technology (US), Hynix (Korea), and SMIC (China).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabrication
CALCULATOR
An
electronic calculator is a small, portable, often inexpensive electronic device
used to perform both basic and complex operations of arithmetic.
The first
solid state electronic calculator was created in the 1960s, building on the
extensive history of tools such as the abacus, developed around 2000 BC, and
the mechanical calculator, developed in the 17th century. It was developed in
parallel with the analog computers of the day.
Pocket sized
devices became available in the 1970s, especially after the invention of the
microprocessor developed by Intel for the Japanese calculator company Busicom.
Modern
electronic calculators vary from cheap, give-away, credit-card sized models to
sturdy desktop models with built-in printers. They became popular in the
mid-1970s as integrated circuits made their size and cost small. By the end of
that decade, calculator prices had reduced to a point where a basic calculator
was affordable to most and they became common in schools.
Computer
operating systems as far back as early Unix have included interactive
calculator programs such as dc and hoc, and calculator functions are included
in almost all PDA-type devices (save a few dedicated address book and
dictionary devices).
In addition
to general purpose calculators, there are those designed for specific markets;
for example, there are scientific calculators which include trigonometric and
statistical calculations. Some calculators even have the ability to do computer
algebra. Graphing calculators can be used to graph functions defined on the
real line, or higher dimensional Euclidean space.
In 1986,
calculators still represented an estimated 41% of the world's general-purpose
hardware capacity to compute information. This diminished to less than 0.05% by
2007.
Modern
electronic calculators contain a keyboard with buttons for digits and arithmetical
operations. Some even contain 00 and 000 buttons to make large numbers easier
to enter. Most basic calculators assign only one digit or operation on each
button. However, in more specific calculators, a button can perform
multi-function working with key combination or current reckoning mode.
Calculators
usually have liquid crystal displays as output in place of historical vacuum
fluorescent displays. See more details in technical improvements. Fractions
such as 1⁄3 are displayed as decimal approximations, for example rounded to
0.33333333. Also, some fractions such as 1⁄7 which is 0.14285714285714 (to 14
significant figures) can be difficult to recognize in decimal form; as a
result, many scientific calculators are able to work in vulgar fractions or mixed
numbers.
Calculators
also have the ability to store numbers into memory. Basic types of these store
only one number at a time. More specific types are able to store many numbers
represented in variables. The variables can also be used for constructing
formulae. Some models have the ability to extend memory capacity to store more
numbers; the extended address is referred to as an array index.
Power
sources of calculators are batteries, solar cells or electricity (for old
models) turning on with a switch or button. Some models even have no turn-off
button but they provide some way to put off, for example, leaving no operation
for a moment, covering solar cell exposure, or closing their lid. Crank-powered
calculators were also common in the early computer era.
BASIC POCKET CALCULATOR
LAYOUT
MC Memory Clear
M+ Memory Addition
M- Memory Subtraction
MR Memory Recall
C Clear display (last entered number,
whereas CE: Clear everything, start all over again)
± Toggle positive/negative number
÷ Division
× Multiplication
- Subtraction
+ Addition
. Decimal point
= Result
Internal workings:
In general, a basic electronic calculator consists of the
following components:
Power source (battery or solar cell)
Keypad - consists of keys used to input numbers and function commands (addition, multiplication, square-root, etc.)
Processor chip (microprocessor) contains:
- Scanning unit - when a calculator is powered on, it scans the keypad waiting to pick up an electrical signal when a key is pressed.
- Encoder unit - converts the numbers and functions into binary code.
- X register and Y register - They are number stores where numbers are stored temporarily while doing calculations. All numbers go into the X register first. The number in the X register is shown on the display.
- Flag register - The function for the calculation is stored here until the calculator needs it.
- Permanent memory (ROM) - The instructions for in-built functions (arithmetic operations, square roots, percentages, trigonometry etc.) are stored here in binary form. These instructions are "programs" stored permanently and cannot be erased.
- User memory (RAM) - The store where numbers can be stored by the user. User memory contents can be changed or erased by the user.
- Arithmetic logic unit (ALU) - The ALU executes all arithmetic and logic instructions, and provides the results in binary coded form.
- Decoder unit - converts binary code into "decimal" numbers which can be displayed on the display unit.
Display panel - displays input numbers, commands
and results. Seven stripes (segments) are used to represent each digit in a
basic calculator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator
NOKIA
Nokia
Corporation is a Finnish communications and information technology
multinational corporation that is headquartered in Espoo, Finland. Its Nokia
Solutions and Networks company provides telecommunications network equipment
and services, while Internet services, including applications, games, music,
media and messaging, and free-of-charge digital map information and navigation
services, are delivered through its wholly owned subsidiary Navteq.
As of 2012,
Nokia employs 101,982 people across 120 countries, conducts sales in more than
150 countries, and reports annual revenues of around €30 billion. By the fourth
quarter of 2012, it was the world's second-largest mobile phone maker in terms
of unit sales (after Samsung), with a global market share of 18.0%. Now, Nokia
only has a 3.2% market share in smartphones. They lost 40% of their revenue in
mobile phones in Q2 2013. Nokia is a public limited-liability company listed on
the Helsinki Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. It is the world's
274th-largest company measured by 2013 revenues according to the Fortune Global
500.
Nokia was
the world's largest vendor of mobile phones from 1998 to 2012. However, over
the past five years its market share declined as a result of the growing use of
touchscreen smartphones from other vendors—principally the iPhone, by Apple,
and devices running on Android, an operating system created by Google. The
corporation's share price fell from a high of US$40 in late 2007 to under US$2
in mid-2012. In a bid to recover, Nokia announced a strategic partnership with
Microsoft in February 2011, leading to the replacement of Symbian with
Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system in all Nokia smartphones. Following
the replacement of the Symbian system, Nokia's smartphone sales figures, which
had previously increased, collapsed dramatically. From the beginning of 2011
until 2013, Nokia fell from its position as the world's largest smartphone
vendor to assume the status of tenth largest.
On 2
September 2013, Microsoft announced its intent to purchase Nokia's mobile phone
business unit as part of an overall deal totaling €5.44 billion (US$7.17
billion). Stephen Elop, Nokia's former CEO, and several other executives will
join Microsoft as part of the deal.
