CSC 220 Etc

Fall 2005 Term

At times, I'll reference figures from the text... they're in PDF format. these are actually from the previous edition, so the figure numbers may be off a bit. Enjoy:

• Chapter 2 figures [ figs ]

• Chapter 1 Introduction [ study_01.htm ]
• Chapter 2 Computer Systems Organization [ study_02.htm ]
• Appendices A/B Binary Numbers, Floats [ study_ab.htm ]

Exam #2 study sheets:

• Chapter 5 Instruction Set Architecture [ study05.htm ]
• Chapter 7 Assembly Language [ study07.htm ]
• And of course, all the Intel assembly language goodies below

Final Exam study sheets:

• Chapter 3 Digital Logic [ study03.htm ]
• Chapter 4 Micro-architecture [ IJVM notes ]

Links

Enjoy these links:

• We use the gcc compiler from Gnu... www.gnu.org
• And we also use the Windows port of gcc at MinGW... http://www.mingw.org/
• My favorite company... www.synopsys.com
• Intel's web site documenting their line of micro-processors... http://www.intel.com/design/archives/processors/
• A book called "The Art of Assembly Language" written by Randall Hyde is accompanied by a site with a lot of Intel Pentium assembly language tips and information... http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/
• A nice Intel assembly book that I can't find now and it really burns me up... http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471375233.html

Links peering into the future:

• Ray Kurzweil is the future-thinking genius of whom I have spoken in class and his web site is very interesting... www.kurzweilai.net
• Kurzweil's book "The Age of Spiritual Machines"... http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/packages/us/kurzweil/
• Read about the (probable) next-generation of computer memory, NRAM:
  • Press announcement from Oct 4, 2005 of the successful creation of an NRAM wafer: http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=/news/news_single.html?id%3D4904
  • The leading company (I believe) in this technology is Nantero: http://www.nantero.com/
  • There's an OK little flash movie explaining how NRAM works at the bottom of this page: http://www.nantero.com/mission.html
  • This technology got an award (and a nice description of its potential) at: http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/feature_emerging.asp?p=6 ... BTW, did you catch some of those numbers? Nanotubes have the potential of storing trillions of bits per square centimeter. By my math, that a terabyte (1 trillion bytes) in a square inch of chip. And of course, lower power, faster access, static memory, resistant to radiation and other environmental nastiness... Geez!
• Here's another Kurzweil site for his new book: http://singularity.com/

Recent news items:

• Intel's announcement of their solution to currernt leakage in their chips... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/technology/21semi.html
• Sun announces its new line of servers: pipelining, multi-processing, all the stuff we talk about in class... http://www.techworld.com/opsys/features/index.cfm?FeatureID=1784
• \We talked about this in class... OpenOffice the GNU-ish free version of the Office tools developed by Sun, et al... http://www.openoffice.org/

We've talked a lot about the history of computing, so virtual FIELD TRIP!

http://www.computerhistory.org/

The Turing Test:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing ... Wikipedia's page on Alan Turing, genius
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test ... and Wikipedia's Turing test goodness
• http://loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html ... this Loebner guy has a "for real" Turing test each year. $2,000 for the best program... $100K if you pass the test. Ha!
• http://www.jabberwacky.com/ ... here's the 2005 winner of Loebner's little contest. You can actually "converse" with the thing; it's pretty bad.
• http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1 ... you can try Ray Kurzweil's little conversation-bot here; click on "Ramona!" BTw, Kurzweil does not claim to have passed the Turing test or even attempting to pass it, to my knowledge. It looks like he's just playing. Try it.

And now for something completely different... an applet that simulates (for educational purposes only) a transistor:

http://tech-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/applets/cmos/cmosdemo.html

Hey forget the X-Files, reality is stranger than fiction. Seems that the feds have been in cohoots with color laser printed manufacturers to encode secret marks into printouts. Also, not that one of the article mentions that the printers have software that tries to detect when someone is trying to copy currency. Mulder!

• http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_1819331,00.html
• http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14041&hed=Printers+Sport+Hidden+Codes

Contact information

wtkrieger@noctrl.edu

Site root: william.krieger.faculty.noctrl.edu