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24-bit Color
In computer architecture, 4-bit integers, or other data units are those that are 4 bits wide. Also, 4-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers, or data buses of that size. Memory addresses (and thus address buses) for 4-bit CPUs are generally much larger than 4-bit (since only 16 memory locations would be very restrictive), such as 12-bit or more, while they could in theory be 8-bit. A group of four bits is also called a nibble and has 24 = 16 possible values. Some of the first microprocessors had a 4-bit word length and were developed around 1970. Traditional (non-quantum) 4-bit computers are by now obsolete, while recent quantum computers are 4-bit, but also based on qubits, such as the IBM Q Experience. See also: Bit slicing#Bit-sliced quantum computers. The first commercial microprocessor was the binary-coded decimal (BCD-based) Intel 4004, developed for calculator applications in 1971; it had a 4- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Architecture
In computer engineering, computer architecture is a description of the structure of a computer system made from component parts. It can sometimes be a high-level description that ignores details of the implementation. At a more detailed level, the description may include the instruction set architecture design, microarchitecture design, logic design, and implementation. History The first documented computer architecture was in the correspondence between Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, describing the analytical engine. When building the computer Z1 in 1936, Konrad Zuse described in two patent applications for his future projects that machine instructions could be stored in the same storage used for data, i.e., the stored-program concept. Two other early and important examples are: * John von Neumann's 1945 paper, First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, which described an organization of logical elements; and *Alan Turing's more detailed ''Proposed Electronic Calculator'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intel 4040
The Intel 4040 microprocessor was the successor to the Intel 4004. It was introduced in 1974. The 4040 employed a 10 μm silicon gate enhancement load PMOS technology, was made up of 3,000 transistors and could execute approximately 62,000 instructions per second. General performance, bus layout and instruction set was identical to the 4004, with the main improvements being in the addition of extra lines and instructions to recognise and service interrupts and hardware Halt/Stop commands (the latter allowing operator-controlled single-stepping for debugging purposes), an extended internal stack and general-purpose "Index" register space to handle nesting of several subroutines and/or interrupts, plus a doubling of program ROM address range. New features *Interrupts * Single Stepping plus both hardware and software HALTing. *Low-power standbyEssentially a side function of Halt/Single Step; all internal processing would be suspended, and most of the chip hardware put into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
74181
The 74181 is a 4-bit slice arithmetic logic unit (ALU), implemented as a 7400 series TTL integrated circuit. The first complete ALU on a single chip, it was used as the arithmetic/logic core in the CPUs of many historically significant minicomputers and other devices. The 74181 represents an evolutionary step between the CPUs of the 1960s, which were constructed using discrete logic gates, and today's single-chip microprocessor CPUs. Although no longer used in commercial products, the 74181 is still referenced in computer organization textbooks and technical papers. It is also sometimes used in "hands-on" college courses to train future computer architects. Specifications The 74181 is a 7400 series medium-scale integration (MSI) TTL integrated circuit, containing the equivalent of 75 logic gates and most commonly packaged as a 24-pin DIP. The 4-bit wide ALU can perform all the traditional add / subtract / decrement operations with or without carry, as well as AND / NAND, OR ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AMD Am2900
Am2900 is a family of integrated circuits (ICs) created in 1975 by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). They were constructed with bipolar devices, in a bit-slice topology, and were designed to be used as modular components each representing a different aspect of a computer control unit (CCU). By using the bit slicing technique, the Am2900 family was able to implement a CCU with data, addresses, and instructions to be any multiple of 4 bits by multiplying the number of ICs. One major problem with this modular technique was that it required a larger number of ICs to implement what could be done on a single CPU IC. The Am2901 chip was the arithmetic logic unit (ALU), and the "core" of the series. It could count using 4 bits and implement binary operations as well as various bit-shifting operations. The 2901 and some other chips in the family were second sourced by an unusually large number of other manufacturers, starting with Motorola and then Raytheon both in 1975 and also Cypr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bit Slicing
Bit slicing is a technique for constructing a processor from modules of processors of smaller bit width, for the purpose of increasing the word length; in theory to make an arbitrary ''n''-bit central processing unit (CPU). Each of these component modules processes one bit field or "slice" of an operand. The grouped processing components would then have the capability to process the chosen full word-length of a given software design. Bit slicing more or less died out due to the advent of the microprocessor. Recently it has been used in arithmetic logic units (ALUs) for quantum computers and as a software technique, e.g. for cryptography in x86 CPUs. Operational details Bit-slice processors (BSPs) usually include 1-, 2-, 4-, 8- or 16-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and control lines (including carry or overflow signals that are internal to the processor in non-bitsliced CPU designs). For example, two 4-bit ALU chips could be arranged side by side, with control lines ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Handheld Electronic Games
Handheld electronic games are very small, portable devices for playing interactive electronic games, often miniaturized versions of video games. The controls, display and speakers are all part of a single unit. Rather than a general-purpose screen made up of a grid of small pixels, they usually have custom displays designed to play one game. This simplicity means they can be made as small as a smartwatch, and sometimes are. The visual output of these games can range from a few small light bulbs or LED lights to calculator-like alphanumerical screens; later these were mostly displaced by liquid crystal and vacuum fluorescent display screens with detailed images and in the case of VFD games, color. Handhelds' popularity was at its peak from the late 1970s into the early 1990s before declining. They are the precursors to the handheld game console. History Early handheld games used simple mechanisms to interact with players, often limited to illuminated buttons and sound effects. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Character (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language. Examples of characters include letters, numerical digits, common punctuation marks (such as "." or "-"), and whitespace. The concept also includes control characters, which do not correspond to visible symbols but rather to instructions to format or process the text. Examples of control characters include carriage return and tab as well as other instructions to printers or other devices that display or otherwise process text. Characters are typically combined into strings. Historically, the term ''character'' was used to denote a specific number of contiguous bits. While a character is most commonly assumed to refer to 8 bits (one byte) today, other options like the 6-bit character code were once popular, and the 5-bit Baudot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
C (programming Language)
C (''pronounced like the letter c'') is a General-purpose language, general-purpose computer programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie, and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of the targeted CPUs. It has found lasting use in operating systems, device drivers, protocol stacks, though decreasingly for application software. C is commonly used on computer architectures that range from the largest supercomputers to the smallest microcontrollers and embedded systems. A successor to the programming language B (programming language), B, C was originally developed at Bell Labs by Ritchie between 1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix. It was applied to re-implementing the kernel of the Unix operating system. During the 1980s, C gradually gained popularity. It has become one of the measuring programming language popularity, most widely used programming languages, with C compilers avail ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microcontrollers
A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs ( processor cores) along with memory and programmable input/output peripherals. Program memory in the form of ferroelectric RAM, NOR flash or OTP ROM is also often included on chip, as well as a small amount of RAM. Microcontrollers are designed for embedded applications, in contrast to the microprocessors used in personal computers or other general purpose applications consisting of various discrete chips. In modern terminology, a microcontroller is similar to, but less sophisticated than, a system on a chip (SoC). An SoC may connect the external microcontroller chips as the motherboard components, but an SoC usually integrates the advanced peripherals like graphics processing unit (GPU) and Wi-Fi interface controller as its internal microcontroller unit circuits. Microcontrollers are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forth (programming Language)
Forth is a procedural, stack-oriented programming language and interactive environment designed by Charles H. "Chuck" Moore and first used by other programmers in 1970. Although not an acronym, the language's name in its early years was often spelled in all capital letters as ''FORTH''. The FORTH-79 and FORTH-83 implementations, which were not written by Moore, became de facto standards, and an official standardization of the language was published in 1994 as ANS Forth. A wide range of Forth derivatives existed before and after ANS Forth. Forth typically combines a compiler with an integrated command shell, where the user interacts via subroutines called ''words''. Words can be defined, tested, redefined, and debugged without recompiling or restarting the whole program. All syntactic elements, including variables and basic operators, are defined as words. A stack is used to pass parameters between words, leading to a Reverse Polish Notation style. For much of Forth's existe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assembly Language
In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence between the instructions in the language and the architecture's machine code instructions. Assembly language usually has one statement per machine instruction (1:1), but constants, comments, assembler directives, symbolic labels of, e.g., memory locations, registers, and macros are generally also supported. The first assembly code in which a language is used to represent machine code instructions is found in Kathleen and Andrew Donald Booth's 1947 work, ''Coding for A.R.C.''. Assembly code is converted into executable machine code by a utility program referred to as an ''assembler''. The term "assembler" is generally attributed to Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill in their 1951 book ''The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rockwell PPS-4
The Rockwell PPS-4, short for "Parallel Processing System, 4-bit", was an early 4-bit microprocessor from Rockwell International, released in late 1972. Although practically unknown today, the PPS series was widely used in calculators, games and toys, and other embedded applications. Updated versions continued to be produced into the 1980s. The original version was implemented in a three-chip set, consisting of the CPU, a clock generator, and a user ROM. In 1975, the clock generator was integrated to produce the PPS-4/2 with a variety of ROM and RAM support chips. In 1976, the PPS-4/1 added user-customized ROM to produce a single-chip solution, running at a lower speed. The release of the PPS-4/1 coincided with the release of the Rockwell PPS-8, an 8-bit version of the system. New support chips released for the PPS-8 also worked with the PPS-4/1. These later versions of the lineup continued to be produced into the 1980s. The PPS-8, however, was abandoned shortly after its introduct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
