supercomputers

A supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation (at the time of its introduction). The term "Super Computing" was first used by New York World newspaper in 1929.Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research. He then took over the supercomputer market with his new designs, holding the top spot in supercomputing for five years (1985–1990). Cray, himself, never used the word "supercomputer"; a little-remembered fact is that he only recognized the word "computer".A supercomputer generates large amounts of heat and must be cooled. Cooling most supercomputers is a major HVAC problem.Information cannot move faster than the speed of light between two parts of a supercomputer. For this reason, a supercomputer that is many meters across must have latencies between its components measured at least in the tens of nanoseconds. Seymour Cray's supercomputer designs attempted to keep cable runs as short as possible for this reason: hence the cylindrical shape of his Cray range of computers. In modern supercomputers built of many conventional CPUs running in parallel, latencies of 1-5 microseconds to send a message between CPUs are typical.Supercomputers consume and produce massive amounts of data in a very short period of time. According to Ken Batcher, "A supercomputer is a device forturning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems." Much work on external storage bandwidth is needed to ensure that this information can be transferred quickly and stored/retrieved correctly.Technologies developed for supercomputers include:Vector processiLiquid coolingNon-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA)Striped disks (the first instance of what was later calledRAID)Parallel filesystems

Artificial Intelliegence

Artificial Intelliegence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is both the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it.Artificial intelligence has successfully been used in a wide range of fields including medical diagnosis, stock trading, robot control, law, scientific discovery and toys. Frequently, when a technique reaches mainstream use it is no longer considered artificial intelligence, sometimes described as the AI effect. It may also become integrated into artificial life.The broad classes of outcome for an AI test are:optimal: it is not possible to perform betterstrong super-human: performs better than all humanssuper-human: performs better than most humanssub-human: performs worse than most humansFor example, performance at checkers is optimalperformance at chess is super-human and nearing strong super-human and performance at many everyday tasks performed by humans is sub-human

Latest Informaton on Dell Inspiron 530 Desktop computers

Latest Informaton on Dell Inspiron 530 Desktop computers

Both the midtower and the slim chassis offer two hard drive bays (which you can populate with two 500GB drives for a 1TB of storage) and the option for a PCI Express graphics card (the half-height variety for the 530s and 531s units). Also available in all models but particularly useful in the slim models, which are likely candidates to be shoehorned into home theater racks, is an optional 802.11b/g (but sadly, not 802.11n) Wi-Fi card, which will save you from having to run an Ethernet cable through your living room. Another living-room friendly technology, Bluetooth, is an option, and a Blu-ray drive is offered on a higher-end model. One note about the optical drive: the Intel G33 motherboard features only serial ATA connections, meaning you're out of luck if you want to add in an old parallel ATA optical drive you may have lying around. Aside from the slim/non-slim choice, the Inspiron range is split up into two types, an Intel based platform, which has the model number 530, and an AMD one, which you'll no doubt be flabbergasted to know is called the 531 (the slim versions are 530s and 531s). Both come with the same shiny white case and configuration options, though our particular review sample had a number of components and peripherals that are not currently available on the UK Dell website and the case was even wrongly labelled as a 531. We are assured that these issues will soon be ironed out though. Dell's Inspiron 530 desktop is a very flexible system that can be configured as a low cost budget system or as a mainstream system. In terms of those looking for a moderately priced performance system, it has potentional for those willing to go through the process of customization and parts selection to get it configured just right. While the key difference between the two models is the pick between AMD and Intel microprocessors, there are a few other differences that are noteworthy as well. For instance, since Dell employs Intel's motherboard in its 530 series, the onboard graphics adapter is Intel's Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 as opposed to NVIDIA's Integrated GeForce 6150 in the 531. Then there's the inclusion of Intel's Pentium Dual Core E2140 microprocessor with 1.60GHz clock speed, 1MB of L2 cache and 800MHz system bus. 531, on the opposite end, packs an AMD Dual Core chip, albeit a faster one. Since this particular machine is also a bit cheaper, system memory is dropped from 1GB to 512MB, Microsoft's Windows Vista is downgraded from Home Premium to Home Basic and of course, the obvious difference in clock speeds, and therefore, performance difference between the two systems is present as wel "Dell's latest range of home user PCs are better looking than ever and for the basic models, they're still as cheap as chips. However, as soon as you start adding extras to your configuration the price quickly rises and alternatives from other manufacturers may be worth a look. Also, the down turn in the quality of Dell's monitors means I'd recommend looking elsewhere for your display