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Creative Computing Benchmark
The Creative Computing Benchmark, also called Ahl's Simple Benchmark, is a computer benchmark that was used to compare the performance of the BASIC programming language on various machines. It was first introduced in the November 1983 issue of ''Creative Computing'' magazine with the measures from a number of 8-bit computers that were popular at the time. Over a period of a few months, the list was greatly expanded to include practically every contemporary machine, topped by the Cray-1 supercomputer, which ran it in 0.01 seconds. The Creative Computing Benchmark was one of three common benchmarks of the era. Its primary competition in the early 1980s in the United States was the Byte Sieve, of September 1981, while the earlier Rugg/Feldman benchmarks of June 1977 were not as well known in the United States, but were widely used in the United Kingdom. History The benchmark first appeared in the November 1983 issue of ''Creative Computing'' under the title "Benchmark Comparison ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benchmark (computing)
In computing, a benchmark is the act of running a computer program, a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative Computer performance, performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard Software performance testing, tests and trials against it. The term ''benchmark'' is also commonly utilized for the purposes of elaborately designed benchmarking programs themselves. Benchmarking is usually associated with assessing performance characteristics of computer hardware, for example, the floating point operation performance of a Central processing unit, CPU, but there are circumstances when the technique is also applicable to software. Software benchmarks are, for example, run against compilers or database management systems (DBMS). Benchmarks provide a method of comparing the performance of various subsystems across different chip/system Computer architecture, architectures. Purpose As computer architecture advanced, it became more diffi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft BASIC
Microsoft BASIC is the foundation software product of the Microsoft company and evolved into a line of BASIC interpreters and compiler(s) adapted for many different microcomputers. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first version of BASIC published by Microsoft as well as the first high-level programming language available for the Altair 8800 microcomputer. During the home computer craze during the late-1970s and early-1980s, BASIC was ported to and supplied with many home computer designs. Slight variations to add support for machine-specific functions, especially graphics, led to a profusion of related designs like Commodore BASIC and Atari Microsoft BASIC. As the early home computers gave way to newer designs like the IBM Personal Computer and Macintosh, Apple Macintosh, BASIC was no longer as widely used, although it retained a strong following. The release of Visual Basic (classic), Visual Basic reboosted its popularity and it remains in wide use on Mic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benchmarks (computing)
Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Benchmark (surveying), a point of known elevation marked for the purpose of surveying * Benchmarking (geolocating), an activity involving finding benchmarks * Benchmark (computing), the result of running a computer program to assess performance * Benchmark, a best-performing, or gold standard test in medicine and statistics Companies * Benchmark Electronics, an electronics manufacturer * Benchmark (venture capital firm), a venture capital firm * Benchmark Recordings, a music label with CDs by the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Mike Bloomfield Other uses * ''Benchmarking'' (journal), a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal relating to the field of quality management * McAfee's Benchmark, a brand of bourbon * ''Benchmark'' (game show), on UK Channel 4 See also * Specification (technica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bus Contention
Bus contention is an undesirable state in computer design where more than one device on a bus attempts to place values on it at the same time. Bus contention is the kind of telecommunication contention that occurs when all communicating devices communicate directly with each other through a single shared channel, and contrasted with "network contention" that occurs when communicating devices communicate indirectly with each other, through point-to-point connections through routers or bridges. Bus contention can lead to erroneous operation, excess power consumption, and, in unusual cases, permanent damage to the hardware—such as burning out a MOSFET. Ian Sinclair; John Dunton"Practical Electronics Handbook"2013. section "Three-state control". p. 208. Description Most bus architectures requires devices sharing a bus to follow an arbitration protocol carefully designed to make the likelihood of contention negligible.. However, when devices on the bus have logic errors, manuf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Programmable Calculator
Programmable calculators are calculators that can automatically carry out a sequence of operations under control of a stored computer programming, program. Most are Turing complete, and, as such, are theoretically general-purpose computers. However, their user interfaces and programming environments are specifically tailored to make performing small-scale numerical computations convenient, rather than general-purpose use. The first programmable calculators such as the IBM CPC used punched cards or other media for program storage. Hand-held electronic calculators store programs on magnetic strips, removable read-only memory cartridges, flash memory, or in battery-backed read/write memory. Since the early 1990s, most of these flexible handheld units belong to the class of graphing calculators. Before the mass-manufacture of inexpensive dot-matrix LCDs, however, programmable calculators usually featured a one-line numeric or alphanumeric display. The Big Four manufacturers of pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TI SR-50
The SR-50 was Texas Instruments' first scientific pocket calculator with trigonometric and logarithm functions. It enhanced their earlier SR-10 and SR-11 calculators, introduced in 1973, which had featured scientific notation, squares, square root, and reciprocals, but had no trig or log functions, and lacked other features. The SR-50 was introduced in 1974 and sold for US$170. It competed with the Hewlett-Packard HP-35. Design The SR-50 measured 5-3/4 inches long by 3-1/8 inches wide by 1-3/16 inches high (147 mm by 78 mm by 31 mm) and was powered by a rechargeable NiCad battery pack, built from three soldered AA cells. It had 40 keys, and flat sliding switches for degrees/radians and on/off. "SR" stood for "slide rule." The SR-50 had a red LED display with a signed ten-digit mantissa plus a signed two-digit exponent for floating point numbers (negative values were indicated with a leading minus sign and positive values with no sign). Internall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atari 8-bit Family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, and Atari XEGS, the last discontinued in 1992. They differ primarily in packaging, each based on the MOS Technology 6502 central processing unit, CPU at and the same custom coprocessor chips. As the first home computer architecture with coprocessors, it has graphics and sound more advanced than most contemporary machines. Video games were a major draw, and first-person space combat simulator ''Star Raiders'' is considered the platform's killer app. The plug-and-play peripherals use the Atari SIO serial bus, with one developer eventually also co-patenting USB. While using the same internal technology, the Atari 800 was sold as a high-end model, while the 400 was more affordable. The 400 has a pressure-sensitive, spillproof membrane keyboar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atari BASIC
Atari BASIC is an interpreter (computing), interpreter for the BASIC programming language that shipped with the Atari 8-bit family of MOS Technology 6502, 6502-based home computers. Unlike most American BASICs of the home computer era, Atari BASIC is not a derivative of Microsoft BASIC and differs in significant ways. It includes keywords for Atari-specific features and lacks support for string arrays, for example. The language was distributed as an 8 kilobyte, KB ROM cartridge for use with the 1979 Atari 400 and 800 computers. Starting with the 600XL and 800XL in 1983, BASIC is built into the system. Despite the Atari 8-bit computers running at a higher speed than most of its contemporaries, several technical decisions placed Atari BASIC near the bottom in performance benchmarks. The original authors addressed most of these issues in a series of improved versions: BASIC A+ (1981), BASIC XL (1983), and BASIC XE (1985). A host of third-party interpreters and compilers like T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olivetti M20
The Olivetti M20 is a Zilog Z8000 based computer designed and released by Olivetti in 1982. Although it offered good performance, it suffered from a lack of software due to its use of the Z8000 processor and custom operating system, PCOS. The company introduced the IBM PC compatible Olivetti M24 in 1983 and the M20 line was phased out. History System design began in 1979 in Cupertino, California at Olivetti's Advanced Technology Center. When announced on March 31, 1982, it was probably the first 16-bit personal computer in Europe with an expected price range of US$3,000-6,000. ''InfoWorld'' magazine saw the M20 as an "answer to Tandy's Model 16, the IBM Personal Computer and the Apple III"; Olivetti itself compared its computer to the IBM PC, Sirius Victor, Commodore 8000 and Apple II in television advertising. Although the computer was initially well received, its use of a non-standard OS (Olivetti's proprietary PCOS) and CPU (Zilog Z8001) proved to be its most serious limit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
16-bit
16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 65,535 (216 − 1) for representation as an (unsigned) binary number, and −32,768 (−1 × 215) through 32,767 (215 − 1) for representation as two's complement. Since 216 is 65,536, a processor with 16-bit memory addresses can directly access 64 KB (65,536 bytes) of byte-addressable memory. If a system uses segmentation with 16-bit segment offsets, more can be accessed. 16-bit architecture The MIT Whirlwind ( 1951) was quite possibly the first-ever 16-bit computer. It was an unusual word size for the era; most systems used six-bit character code and used a word length of some multiple of 6-bits. This changed with the effort to introduce ASCII, which used a 7-bit code and naturally led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM Personal Computer
The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team of engineers and designers directed by Don Estridge in Boca Raton, Florida. The machine was based on open architecture and third-party peripherals. Over time, expansion cards and software technology increased to support it. The PC had a influence of the IBM PC on the personal computer market, substantial influence on the personal computer market. The specifications of the IBM PC became one of the most popular computer design standards in the world. The only significant competition it faced from a non-compatible platform throughout the 1980s was from the Apple Macintosh product line. The majority of modern personal computers are distant descendants of the IBM PC. History Prior to the 1980s, IBM had largely been known as a provider of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BASIC
BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers. At the time, nearly all computers required writing custom software, which only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn. In addition to the program language, Kemeny and Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS), which allowed multiple users to edit and run BASIC programs simultaneously on remote terminals. This general model became very popular on minicomputer systems like the PDP-11 and Data General Nova in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hewlett-Packard produced an entire computer line for this method of operation, introducing the HP2000 series in the late 1960s and continuing sales into the 1980s. Many early video games trace their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
