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DSOS
DSOS (Deep Six Operating System) was a real-time operating system (sometimes termed an operating system kernel) developed by Texas Instruments' division Geophysical Services Incorporated (GSI) in the mid-1970s. Background The Geophysical Services division of Texas Instruments' main business was to search for petroleum (oil). They would collect data in likely spots around the world, process that data using high performance computers, and produce analyses that guided oil companies toward promising sites for drilling. Much of the oil being sought was to be found beneath the ocean, hence GSI maintained a fleet of ships to collect seismic data from remote regions of the world. To do this properly, it was essential that the ships be navigated precisely. If evidence of oil is found, one cannot just mark an ''X'' on a tree. The oil is thousands of feet below the ocean and typically hundreds of miles from land. But this was a decade or more before GPS existed, thus the processing load ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog chips and embedded processors, which account for more than 80% of its revenue. TI also produces digital light processing (DLP) technology and education technology products including calculators, microcontrollers, and multi-core processors. Texas Instruments emerged in 1951 after a reorganization of Geophysical Service Incorporated, a company founded in 1930 that manufactured equipment for use in the seismic industry, as well as defense electronics. TI produced the world's first commercial silicon transistor in 1954, and the same year designed and manufactured the first transistor radio. Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit in 1958 while working at TI's Central Research Labs. TI also invented the hand-held calculator in 1967, and intr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naval Mine
A naval mine is a self-contained explosive weapon placed in water to damage or destroy surface ships or submarines. Similar to anti-personnel mine, anti-personnel and other land mines, and unlike purpose launched naval depth charges, they are deposited and left to wait until, depending on their fuzing, they are triggered by the approach of or contact with any vessel. Naval mines can be used offensively, to hamper enemy shipping movements or lock vessels into a harbour; or defensively, to create "safe" zones protecting friendly sea lanes, harbours, and naval assets. Mines allow the minelaying force commander to concentrate warships or defensive assets in mine-free areas giving the adversary three choices: undertake a resource-intensive and time-consuming minesweeping effort, accept the casualties of challenging the minefield, or use the unmined waters where the greatest concentration of enemy firepower will be encountered. Although international law requires signatory nations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Real-time Clock
A real-time clock (RTC) is an electronic device (most often in the form of an integrated circuit) that measures the passage of time. Although the term often refers to the devices in personal computers, server (computing), servers and embedded systems, RTCs are present in almost any electronic device which needs to keep accurate time of day. Terminology The term ''real-time clock'' is used to avoid confusion with ordinary clock signal, hardware clocks which are only signals that govern digital electronics, and do not count time in human units. RTC should not be confused with real-time computing, which shares its three-letter acronym but does not directly relate to time of day. Purpose Although keeping time can be done without an RTC, using one has benefits: * Reliably maintains and provides current time through disruptive system states such as Hang (computing), hangs, Sleep mode, sleep, reboots, or if given sufficient backup power, full Shutdown (computing), shutdown and hardwa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Memory Management
Memory management (also dynamic memory management, dynamic storage allocation, or dynamic memory allocation) is a form of Resource management (computing), resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and free it for reuse when no longer needed. This is critical to any advanced computer system where more than a single Process (computing), process might be underway at any time. Several methods have been devised that increase the effectiveness of memory management. Virtual memory systems separate the memory addresses used by a process from actual physical addresses, allowing separation of processes and increasing the size of the virtual address space beyond the available amount of Random-access memory, RAM using paging or swapping to secondary storage. The quality of the virtual memory manager can have an extensive effect on overall system C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semaphore (programming)
In computer science, a semaphore is a variable or abstract data type used to control access to a common resource by multiple threads and avoid critical section problems in a concurrent system such as a multitasking operating system. Semaphores are a type of synchronization primitive. A trivial semaphore is a plain variable that is changed (for example, incremented or decremented, or toggled) depending on programmer-defined conditions. A useful way to think of a semaphore as used in a real-world system is as a record of how many units of a particular resource are available, coupled with operations to adjust that record ''safely'' (i.e., to avoid race conditions) as units are acquired or become free, and, if necessary, wait until a unit of the resource becomes available. Though semaphores are useful for preventing race conditions, they do not guarantee their absence. Semaphores that allow an arbitrary resource count are called counting semaphores, while semaphores that are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mainframe Computer
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and large-scale transaction processing. A mainframe computer is large but not as large as a supercomputer and has more processing power than some other classes of computers, such as minicomputers, server (computing), servers, workstations, and personal computers. Most large-scale computer-system architectures were established in the 1960s, but they continue to evolve. Mainframe computers are often used as servers. The term ''mainframe'' was derived from the large cabinet, called a ''main frame'', that housed the central processing unit and main computer memory, memory of early computers. Later, the term ''mainframe'' was used to distinguish high-end commercial computers from less powerful machines. Design Modern mainfr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Memory Protection
Memory protection is a way to control memory access rights on a computer, and is a part of most modern instruction set architectures and operating systems. The main purpose of memory protection is to prevent a process from accessing memory that has not been allocated to it. This prevents a bug or malware within a process from affecting other processes, or the operating system itself. Protection may encompass all accesses to a specified area of memory, write accesses, or attempts to execute the contents of the area. An attempt to access unauthorized memory results in a hardware fault, e.g., a segmentation fault, storage violation exception, generally causing abnormal termination of the offending process. Memory protection for computer security includes additional techniques such as address space layout randomization and executable-space protection. Methods Segmentation Segmentation refers to dividing a computer's memory into segments. A reference to a memory locatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Machine-dependent
Machine-dependent software is software that runs only on a specific computer. Applications that run on multiple computer architectures are called machine-independent, or cross-platform. Many organisations opt for such software because they believe that machine-dependent software is an asset and will attract more buyers. Organizations that want application software to work on heterogeneous computers may port that software to the other machines. Deploying machine-dependent applications on such architectures, such applications require porting. This procedure includes composing, or re-composing, the application's code to suit the target platform. Porting Porting is the process of converting an application from one architecture to another. Software languages such as Java are designed so that applications can migrate across architectures without source code modifications. The term is applied when programming/equipment is changed to make it usable in a different architecture. Code that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spaghetti Code
Spaghetti code is a pejorative phrase for difficult-to- maintain and unstructured computer source code. Code being developed with poor structure can be due to any of several factors, such as volatile project requirements, lack of programming style rules, and software engineers with insufficient ability or experience. Meaning Code that overuses GOTO statements rather than structured programming constructs, resulting in convoluted and unmaintainable programs, is often called spaghetti code. Such code has a complex and tangled control structure, resulting in a program flow that is conceptually like a bowl of spaghetti, twisted and tangled. In a 1980 publication by the United States National Bureau of Standards, the phrase ''spaghetti program'' was used to describe older programs having "fragmented and scattered files". Spaghetti code can also describe an anti-pattern in which object-oriented code is written in a procedural style, such as by creating classes whose methods are ov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Real-time Computing
Real-time computing (RTC) is the computer science term for Computer hardware, hardware and software systems subject to a "real-time constraint", for example from Event (synchronization primitive), event to Event (computing), system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within specified time constraints, often referred to as "deadlines".Mordechai Ben-Ari, Ben-Ari, Mordechai; "Principles of Concurrent and Distributed Programming", ch. 16, Prentice Hall, 1990, , p. 164 The term "real-time" is also used in Computer simulation, simulation to mean that the simulation's clock runs at the same speed as a real clock. Real-time responses are often understood to be in the order of milliseconds, and sometimes microseconds. A system not specified as operating in real time cannot usually ''guarantee'' a response within any timeframe, although ''typical'' or ''expected'' response times may be given. Real-time processing ''fails'' if not completed within a specified deadline rela ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assembly Language
In computing, assembly language (alternatively 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 Dig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, applied disciplines (including the design and implementation of Computer architecture, hardware and Software engineering, software). Algorithms and data structures are central to computer science. The theory of computation concerns abstract models of computation and general classes of computational problem, problems that can be solved using them. The fields of cryptography and computer security involve studying the means for secure communication and preventing security vulnerabilities. Computer graphics (computer science), Computer graphics and computational geometry address the generation of images. Programming language theory considers different ways to describe computational processes, and database theory concerns the management of re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
