Graphics processing unit

Graphics processing unit

A graphics processor unit (GPU), also occasionally called visual processor unit (VPU), is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. Modern GPUs are very efficient at manipulating computer graphics and image processing, and their highly parallel structure makes them more effective than general-purpose CPUs for algorithms where processing of large blocks of data is done in parallel. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present on a video card, or it can be embedded on the motherboard or—in certain CPUs—on the CPU die.

The term GPU was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as "the world's first 'GPU', or Graphics Processing Unit, a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that are capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second". Rival ATI Technologies coined the term visual processing unit or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700 in 2002.

Computational functions

Modern GPUs use most of their transistors to do calculations related to 3D computer graphics. They were initially used to accelerate the memory-intensive work of texture mapping and rendering polygons, later adding units to accelerate geometric calculations such as the rotation and translation of vertices into different coordinate systems. Recent developments in GPUs include support for programmable shaders which can manipulate vertices and textures with many of the same operations supported by CPUs, oversampling and interpolation techniques to reduce aliasing, and very high-precision color spaces. Because most of these computations involve matrix and vector operations, engineers and scientists have increasingly studied the use of GPUs for non-graphical calculations.

In addition to the 3D hardware, today's GPUs include basic 2D acceleration and framebuffer capabilities (usually with a VGA compatibility mode). Newer cards like AMD/ATI HD5000-HD7000 even lack 2D acceleration; it has to be emulated by 3D hardware.

What is iPhone?

iPhone is a line of smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It runs Apple's iOS mobile operating system.The first generation iPhone was released on June 29, 2007; the most recent iPhone models are the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which were unveiled at a special event on September 9, 2014.

The user interface is built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard. The iPhone has Wi-Fi and can connect to many cellular networks, including 1xRTT (represented by a 1x on the status bar) and GPRS (shown as GPRS on the status bar), EDGE (shown as a capital E on the status bar), UMTS and EV-DO (shown as 3G), a faster version of UMTS and 4G (shown as a 4G symbol on the status bar), and LTE (shown as LTE on the status bar). An iPhone can shoot video (though this was not a standard feature until the iPhone 3GS), take photos, play music, send and receive email, browse the web, send texts, GPS navigation, record notes, do mathematical calculations, and receive visual voicemail. Other functions—video games, reference works, social networking, etc.—can be enabled by downloading application programs (‘apps’); as of October 2013, the App Store offered more than one million apps by Apple and third parties and is ranked as the world's second largest mobile software distribution network of its kind (by number of currently available applications).

There are eight generations of iPhone models, each accompanied by one of the eight major releases of iOS. The original 1st-generation iPhone was a GSM phone and established design precedents, such as a button placement that has persisted throughout all releases and a screen size maintained for the next four iterations. The iPhone 3G added 3G cellular network capabilities and A-GPS location. The iPhone 3GS added a faster processor and a higher-resolution camera that could record video at 480p. The iPhone 4 featured a higher-resolution 960×640 "Retina Display", a VGA front-facing camera for video calling and other apps, and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with 720p video capture. The iPhone 4S upgrades to an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording, a dual-core A5 processor, and a natural language voice control system called Siri. iPhone 5 features the dual-core A6 processor, increases the size of the Retina display to 4 inches, introduces LTE support and replaces the 30-pin connector with an all-digital Lightning connector. The iPhone 5S features the dual-core 64-bit A7 processor, an updated camera with a larger aperture and dual-LED flash, and the Touch ID fingerprint scanner, integrated into the home button. The iPhone 5C features the same A6 chip as the iPhone 5, along with a new backside-illuminated FaceTime camera and a new casing made of polycarbonate. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus further increased screen size, measuring at 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches, respectively. In addition, they also feature a new A8 chip and M8 motion coprocessor. As of 2013, the iPhone 3GS had the longest production run, 1,181 days; followed by the iPhone 4, produced for 1,174 days.

The resounding sales of the iPhone, at the time, have been credited with reshaping the smartphone industry and helping make Apple one of the world's most valuable publicly traded companies in 2011–12.

In late 2014, JP Morgan estimated "iPhone percentage of the worldwide smartphone install base has been around 15% since late 2012" being far behind the dominant Android-based smartphones. In a few mature markets countries such as; Japan, the iPhone has a majority, an exception to Android's dominance, and Australia where Android is rapidly approaching parity. In March 2014, sales of the iPhone brand had reached 500 million devices. In the last quarter of 2014, there were 74.5 million iPhones sold, a new record, compared to 51.0 million in the last quarter of 2013. Tim Cook revealed at the Apple Watch conference on March 9, 2015 that Apple had sold a total of 700 million iPhones to date.

Printer

Printer

In computing, a printer is a peripheral which makes a persistent human readable representation of graphics or text on paper or similar physical media. The two most common printer mechanisms are black and white laser printers used for common documents, and color inkjet printers which can produce high quality photograph quality output.

The world's first computer printer was a 19th-century mechanically driven apparatus invented by Charles Babbage for his difference engine. This system used a series of metal rods with characters printed on them and stuck a roll of paper against the rods to print the characters. The first commercial printers generally used mechanisms from electric typewriters and Teletype machines, which operated in a similar fashion. The demand for higher speed led to the development of new systems specifically for computer use. Among the systems widely used through the 1980s were daisy wheel systems similar to typewriters, line printers that produced similar output but at much higher speed, and dot matrix systems that could mix text and graphics but produced relatively low-quality output. The plotter was used for those requiring high quality line art like blueprints.

The introduction of the low-cost laser printer in 1984 with the first HP LaserJet, and the addition of PostScript in next year's Apple LaserWriter, set off a revolution in printing known as desktop publishing. Laser printers using PostScript mixed text and graphics, like dot-matrix printers, but at quality levels formerly available only from commercial typesetting systems. By 1990, most simple printing tasks like fliers and brochures were now created on personal computers and then laser printed; expensive offset printing systems were being dumped as scrap. The HP Deskjet of 1988 offered the same advantages as laser printer in terms of flexibility, but produced somewhat lower quality output (depending on the paper) from much less expensive mechanisms. Inkjet systems rapidly displaced dot matrix and daisy wheel printers from the market. By the 2000s high-quality printers of this sort had fallen under the $100 price point and became commonplace.

The rapid update of internet email through the 1990s and into the 2000s has largely displaced the need for printing as a means of moving documents, and a wide variety of reliable storage systems means that a "physical backup" is of little benefit today. Even the desire for printed output for "offline reading" while on mass transit or aircraft has been displaced by e-book readers and tablet computers. Today, traditional printers are being used more for special purposes, like printing photographs or artwork, and are no longer a must-have peripheral.

Starting around 2010, 3D printing has become an area of intense interest, allowing the creation of physical objects with the same sort of effort as an early laser printer required to produce a brochure. These devices are in their earliest stages of development and have not yet become commonplace.

Types of printers

Personal printers are primarily designed to support individual users, and may be connected to only a single computer. These printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs, requiring minimal setup time to produce a hard copy of a given document. However, they are generally slow devices ranging from 6 to around 25 pages per minute (ppm), and the cost per page is relatively high. However, this is offset by the on-demand convenience. Some printers can print documents stored on memory cards or from digital cameras and scanners.

Networked or shared printers are "designed for high-volume, high-speed printing." They are usually shared by many users on a network and can print at speeds of 45 to around 100 ppm. The Xerox 9700 could achieve 120 ppm.

A virtual printer is a piece of computer software whose user interface and API resembles that of a printer driver, but which is not connected with a physical computer printer.

A 3D printer is a device for making a three-dimensional object from a 3D model or other electronic data source through additive processes in which successive layers of material ( including plastics, metals, food, cement, wood, and other materials) are laid down under computer control. It is called a printer by analogy with an inkjet printer which produces a two-dimensional document by a similar process of depositing a layer of ink on paper.

Technology

The choice of print technology has a great effect on the cost of the printer and cost of operation, speed, quality and permanence of documents, and noise. Some printer technologies don't work with certain types of physical media, such as carbon paper or transparencies.

A second aspect of printer technology that is often forgotten is resistance to alteration: liquid ink, such as from an inkjet head or fabric ribbon, becomes absorbed by the paper fibers, so documents printed with liquid ink are more difficult to alter than documents printed with toner or solid inks, which do not penetrate below the paper surface.

Cheques can be printed with liquid ink or on special cheque paper with toner anchorage so that alterations may be detected. The machine-readable lower portion of a cheque must be printed using MICR toner or ink. Banks and other clearing houses employ automation equipment that relies on the magnetic flux from these specially printed characters to function properly.

DVD player

A DVD player is a device that plays discs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to watch the DVD content, which could be a movie, a recorded TV show, or other content.

The first DVD player was created by Tatung Company in Taiwan in collaboration with Pacific Digital Company from the United States in 1994. Some manufacturers originally announced that DVD players would be available as early as the middle of 1996. These predictions were too optimistic. Delivery was initially held up for "political" reasons of copy protection demanded by movie studios, but was later delayed by lack of movie titles. The first players appeared in Japan in November, 1996, followed by U.S. players in March, 1997, with distribution limited to only 7 major cities for the first 6 months.

Players slowly trickled into other regions around the world. Prices for the first players in 1997 were $1000 and up. By the end of 2000, players were available for under $100 at discount retailers. In 2003 players became available for under $50. Six years after the initial launch, close to one thousand models of DVD players were available from over a hundred consumer electronics manufacturers.

Fujitsu released the first DVD-ROM-equipped computer on Nov. 6 in Japan. Toshiba released a DVD-ROM-equipped computer and a DVD-ROM drive in Japan in early 1997 (moved back from December which was moved back from November). DVD-ROM drives from Toshiba, Pioneer, Panasonic, Hitachi, and Sony began appearing in sample quantities as early as January 1997, but none were available before May. The first PC upgrade kits (a combination of DVD-ROM drive and hardware decoder card) became available from Creative Labs, Hi-Val, and Diamond Multimedia in April and May of 1997. In 2014, every major PC manufacturer has models that include DVD-ROM drives.

The first DVD-Audio players were released in Japan by Pioneer in late 1999, but they did not play copy-protected discs. Matsushita (under the Panasonic and Technics labels) first released full-fledged players in July 2000 for $700 to $1,200. DVD-Audio players are now also made by Aiwa, Denon, JVC, Kenwood, Madrigal, Marantz, Nakamichi, Onkyo, Toshiba, Yamaha, and others. Sony released the first SACD players in May 1999 for $5,000. Pioneer's first DVD-Audio players released in late 1999 also played SACD. SACD players are now also made by Accuphase, Aiwa, Denon, Kenwood, Marantz, Philips, Sharp, and others.

The History about Gadget

The origins of the word "gadget" trace back to the 19th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there is anecdotal (not necessarily true) evidence for the use of "gadget" as a placeholder name for a technical item whose precise name one can't remember since the 1850s; with Robert Brown's 1886 book Spunyarn and Spindrift, A sailor boy’s log of a voyage out and home in a China tea-clipper containing the earliest known usage in print. The etymology of the word is disputed.

A widely circulated story holds that the word gadget was "invented" when Gaget, Gauthier & Cie, the company behind the repoussé construction of the Statue of Liberty (1886), made a small-scale version of the monument and named it after their firm; however this contradicts the evidence that the word was already used before in nautical circles, and the fact that it did not become popular, at least in the USA, until after World War I. Other sources cite a derivation from the French gâchette which has been applied to various pieces of a firing mechanism, or the French gagée, a small tool or accessory.

The October 1918 issue of Notes and Queries contains a multi-article entry on the word "gadget" (12 S. iv. 187). H. Tapley-Soper of The City Library, Exeter, writes:

A discussion arose at the Plymouth meeting of the Devonshire Association in 1916 when it was suggested that this word should be recorded in the list of local verbal provincialisms. Several members dissented from its inclusion on the ground that it is in common use throughout the country; and a naval officer who was present said that it has for years been a popular expression in the service for a tool or implement, the exact name of which is unknown or has for the moment been forgotten. I have also frequently heard it applied by motor-cycle friends to the collection of fitments to be seen on motor cycles. 'His handle-bars are smothered in gadgets' refers to such things as speedometers, mirrors, levers, badges, mascots, &c., attached to the steering handles. The 'jigger' or short-rest used in billiards is also often called a 'gadget'; and the name has been applied by local platelayers to the 'gauge' used to test the accuracy of their work. In fact, to borrow from present-day Army slang, 'gadget' is applied to 'any old thing.'

The usage of the term in military parlance extended beyond the navy. In the book "Above the Battle" by Vivian Drake, published in 1918 by D. Appleton & Co., of New York and London, being the memoirs of a pilot in the British Royal Flying Corps, there is the following passage: "Our ennui was occasionally relieved by new gadgets -- "gadget" is the Flying Corps slang for invention! Some gadgets were good, some comic and some extraordinary."

By the second half of the twentieth century, the term "gadget" had taken on the connotations of compactness and mobility. In the 1965 essay "The Great Gizmo" (a term used interchangeably with "gadget" throughout the essay), the architectural and design critic Reyner Banham defines the item as:

A characteristic class of US products––perhaps the most characteristic––is a small self-contained unit of high performance in relation to its size and cost, whose function is to transform some undifferentiated set of circumstances to a condition nearer human desires. The minimum of skills is required in its installation and use, and it is independent of any physical or social infrastructure beyond that by which it may be ordered from catalogue and delivered to its prospective user. A class of servants to human needs, these clip-on devices, these portable gadgets, have coloured American thought and action far more deeply––I suspect––than is commonly understood.

Motherboard

A motherboard (sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, planar board or logic board, or colloquially, a mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) found in computers and other expandable systems. It holds many of the crucial electronic components of the system, such as the central processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a motherboard contains significant sub-systems such as the processor and other components.

Motherboard specifically refers to a PCB with expansion capability and as the name suggests, this board is the "mother" of all components attached to it, which often include sound cards, video cards, network cards, hard drives, or other forms of persistent storage; TV tuner cards, cards providing extra USB or FireWire slots and a variety of other custom components (the term mainboard is applied to devices with a single board and no additional expansions or capability, such as controlling boards in televisions, washing machines and other embedded systems).

CPU sockets

A CPU socket (central processing unit) or slot is an electrical component that attaches to a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and is designed to house a CPU (also called a microprocessor). It is a special type of integrated circuit socket designed for very high pin counts. A CPU socket provides many functions, including a physical structure to support the CPU, support for a heat sink, facilitating replacement (as well as reducing cost), and most importantly, forming an electrical interface both with the CPU and the PCB. CPU sockets on the motherboard can most often be found in most desktop and server computers (laptops typically use surface mount CPUs), particularly those based on the Intel x86 architecture. A CPU socket type and motherboard chipset must support the CPU series and speed.

Integrated peripherals

Block diagram of a modern motherboard, which supports many on-board peripheral functions as well as several expansion slots

With the steadily declining costs and size of integrated circuits, it is now possible to include support for many peripherals on the motherboard. By combining many functions on one PCB, the physical size and total cost of the system may be reduced; highly integrated motherboards are thus especially popular in small form factor and budget computers.

Disk controllers for a floppy disk drive, up to 2 PATA drives, and up to 6 SATA drives (including RAID 0/1 support)

integrated graphics controller supporting 2D and 3D graphics, with VGA and TV output

integrated sound card supporting 8-channel (7.1) audio and S/PDIF output

Fast Ethernet network controller for 10/100 Mbit networking

USB 2.0 controller supporting up to 12 USB ports

IrDA controller for infrared data communication (e.g. with an IrDA-enabled cellular phone or printer)

Temperature, voltage, and fan-speed sensors that allow software to monitor the health of computer components.

Peripheral card slots

A typical motherboard of 2012 will have a different number of connections depending on its standard.

A standard ATX motherboard will typically have two or three PCI-E 16x connection for a graphics card, one or two legacy PCI slots for various expansion cards, and one or two PCI-E 1x (which has superseded PCI). A standard EATX motherboard will have two to four PCI-Express 16x connection for graphics cards, and a varying number of PCI and PCI-E 1x slots. It can sometimes also have a PCI-E 4x slot (will vary between brands and models).

Some motherboards have two or more PCI-E 16x slots, to allow more than 2 monitors without special hardware, or use a special graphics technology called SLI (for Nvidia) and Crossfire (for ATI). These allow 2 to 4 graphics cards to be linked together, to allow better performance in intensive graphical computing tasks, such as gaming, video editing, etc.

Freezer

Freezer

Freezer units are used in households and in industry and commerce. Food stored at or below −18 °C (0 °F) is safe indefinitely. Most household freezers maintain temperatures from −23 to −18 °C (−9 to 0 °F), although some freezer-only units can achieve −34 °C (−29 °F) and lower. Refrigerators generally do not achieve lower than −23 °C (−9 °F), since the same coolant loop serves both compartments: Lowering the freezer compartment temperature excessively causes difficulties in maintaining above-freezing temperature in the refrigerator compartment. Domestic freezers can be included as a separate compartment in a refrigerator, or can be a separate appliance. Domestic freezers are generally upright units resembling refrigerators or chests (upright units laid on their backs). Many modern upright freezers come with an ice dispenser built into their door. Some upscale models include thermostat displays and controls, and flat-screen televisions have even been incorporated.

Effect on lifestyle

The refrigerator allows the modern family to keep food fresh for longer than before. The most notable improvement is for meat and other highly perishable wares, which needed to be refined to gain anything resembling shelf life. (On the other hand, refrigerators and freezers can also be stocked with processed, quick-cook foods that are less healthy.) Refrigeration in transit makes it possible to enjoy foodstuffs from distant places.

Dairy products, meats, fish, poultry and vegetables can be kept refrigerated in the same space within the kitchen (although raw meat should be kept separate from other foodstuffs for reasons of hygiene).

Freezers allow people to buy food in bulk and eat it at leisure, and bulk purchases save money. Ice cream, a popular commodity of the 20th century, could previously only be obtained by traveling to where the product was made and eating it on the spot. Now it is a common food item. Ice on demand not only adds to the enjoyment of cold drinks, but is useful for first-aid, and for cold packs that can be kept frozen for picnics or in case of emergency.

Temperature zones and ratings

File:Theater commercial, electric refrigerator, 1926.ogg

Commercial for electric refrigerators in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1926

Some refrigerators are now divided into four zones to store different types of food:

−18 °C (0 °F) (freezer)

0 °C (32 °F) (meat zone)

5 °C (41 °F) (cooling zone)

10 °C (50 °F) (crisper)

The capacity of a refrigerator is measured in either litres or cubic feet. Typically the volume of a combined refrigerator-freezer is split to 100 litres (3.53 cubic feet) for the freezer and 140 litres (4.94 cubic feet) for the refrigerator, although these values are highly variable.

Temperature settings for refrigerator and freezer compartments are often given arbitrary numbers by manufacturers (for example, 1 through 9, warmest to coldest), but generally 3 to 5 °C (37 to 41 °F) is ideal for the refrigerator compartment and −18 °C (0 °F) for the freezer. Some refrigerators must be within certain external temperature parameters to run properly. This can be an issue when placing units in an unfinished area, such as a garage. European freezers, and refrigerators with a freezer compartment, have a four star rating system to grade freezers.

[∗]  : min temperature = −6 °C (21 °F). Maximum storage time for (pre-frozen) food is 1 week

[∗∗]  : min temperature = −12 °C (10 °F). Maximum storage time for (pre-frozen) food is 1 month

[∗∗∗]  : min temperature = −18 °C (0 °F). Maximum storage time for (pre-frozen) food is between 3 and 12 months depending on type (meat, vegetables, fish, etc.)

[∗∗∗∗] : min temperature = −18 °C (0 °F). Maximum storage time for pre-frozen or frozen-from-fresh food is between 3 and 12 months

Although both the three and four star ratings specify the same storage times and same minimum temperature of −18 °C (0 °F), only a four star freezer is intended for freezing fresh food, and may include a "fast freeze" function (runs the compressor continually, down to as low as −26 °C (−15 °F)) to facilitate this. Three (or fewer) stars are used for frozen food compartments that are only suitable for storing frozen food; introducing fresh food into such a compartment is likely to result in unacceptable temperature rises. This difference in categorisation is shown in the design of the 4-star logo, where the "standard" three stars are displayed in a box using "positive" colours, denoting the same normal operation as a 3-star freezer, and the fourth star showing the additional fresh food/fast freeze function is prefixed to the box in "negative" colours or with other distinct formatting.

Most European refrigerators include a moist cold refrigerator section (which does require (automatic) defrosting at irregular intervals) and a (rarely frost free) freezer section.