Parallel Processing

[Gayne]

Hi mates am new on this forum, but seem to have alot of questions already. can someone help me here pls?

1. WHAT ARE THE 3 FACTORS THAT HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY INFLUENCED THE EVOLUTION AND DESIGN OF SYSTEM SOFTWARE ESPECIALLY OPERATING SYSTEM?

 

2. dESCRIBE 2 DIFFERENT METHODS FOR TRANSMITTING CHARACTERS IN A COMPUTER NETWORK ENVIRONMENT.

 

3. DEFINE MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS?

 

4. WHAT ARE THE DISAVANTAGES OF A TIME SHARING SYSTEM

 

5. DESCRIBE BRIEFLY THE VARIOUS SUBSYSTEMS OF A COMPUTER THAT ARE VULNERABLE TO COMPUTER CRIME AND FRAUD

 

6. eXPLAIN THE TERM 'TOKEN PASSING'

 

7 A TELETYPE TYPICALLY SENDS OR RECEIVES TEN ASCII CHARACTERS PER SECOND, IF EACH CHARACTER HAS 11 BITS CALCULATE THE BIT TIME.

 

quite a handful huh pls i can be reached on [[DETAILS REMOVED BY MODERATOR]]

 

much love

Edited January 5, 2010 by mooeypoo

[mooeypoo]

Moved to "Homework Help" forum. Phone and email removed.

 

Gayne, we'd love to help but we are not really comfortable with feeding answers. We'd rather help you reach those answers yourself. At the very least, tell us what you already started doing and we can try and help you get more sources.

[alton]

Hello,

Parallel computing is the simultaneous execution of the same task (split up and specially adapted) on multiple processors in order to obtain results faster. The idea is based on the fact that the process of solving a problem usually can be divided into smaller tasks, which may be carried out simultaneously with some coordination.

[toastywombel]

I guess I'll take these guys one by one.

 

1. WHAT ARE THE 3 FACTORS THAT HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY INFLUENCED THE EVOLUTION AND DESIGN OF SYSTEM SOFTWARE ESPECIALLY OPERATING SYSTEM?

 

Number one, in my opinion would be the transistor and the later development of the microchip. Without the microchip operating systems would most likely be command prompt. There would be no video cards for computers so anything graphical is out the window. Mouse polling would be impossible as well. Essentially the computer as we know it would be impossible.

 

Another huge innovation was the mouse. The mouse was fist introduced to the consumer market through the Xerox 8010 in the early 1980's. However it did not become popular until the Apple Macintosh was released in 1984.

 

Steve Jobs, CEO and Founder of Apple, describes the mouse, "Without it (the mouse), operating systems would not be the graphical user interfaces we see today.". . . "It (the mouse) was the first piece of hardware that allowed the user to actually interact with the operating system, as opposed to just feed the system data." This is according to a book I got for Christmas, The Mind of Jobs.

 

Furthermore, The mouse allowed software to be more customisable, unique, and easy to use. Users did not have to remember commands any more to control their programs, they could navigate it with a mouse instead.

 

Finally I say graphics cards. The first use of a graphics card in a computer product was the MDA by IBM. This card only displayed 60 characters on a monochrome, text display. Of course we have come along way since then. In less than 20 years we have designed graphics cards that allow us to play games that look beautiful, detailed. Many of these games have rich environments with amazing texturing. Furthermore, these applications can smoothly refresh at hundreds of frames per second.

 

Dedicated graphics processors and graphics memory have allowed for applications and operating systems to become what they are today, interactive programs for the common consumer.

 

Other notable factors that are key, but I will not over them extensively:

keyboard

64-bit bus

RAM Innovations

DirectX

Touch Screen

 

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_card

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_%28computing%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface

 

This is the only one for today. I will try to address the others as time goes when i am not so tired. Hope this helps.

[mooeypoo]

I will remind everyone that we are not to give the answers to homework questions, but only help in ways to solve them.