This will be the beginning of a series of posts that will serve to enlighten the ever changing information technology industry.

Real Gross Output of Computer systems design and related services (in billions) (1)

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

269.8

266.2

291.8

312.0

331.3

335.3

348.1

354.3

Moore’s law refers to an observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965. He noticed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since their invention. (2)

Computer Applications:

• Personal Computer (PC) - Most widely known application. Delivers good performance to single user at low cost and executes third part software.
• Servers (S) - greater computing, storage, and input/output capacity. In general, servers place a greater emphasis on dependability, since one crash can be costly.
• Supercomputers (SC) - tens of thousands of processors and many terabytes of memory. Mostly used for scientific developments like weather forecasting and oil exploration.
• Embedded Computers (EC)- Run one application or set of related applications that are integrated within the hardware. There are many embedded computers around now.
• Personal Mobile Devices (PMD) - Replacing the PC with drawback of not having traditional peripherals and being costly
• Cloud Computing (CC) - Replacing the server with datacenters known as Warehouse Scale Computers

Issues of PostPC Era (PMD & CC) are the parallel nature of processor and the hierarchical nature of memories. Despite the issues, many professionals still believe that Moore’s Law holds substance in the evolution of the computer based on the graph below.

By reading this series you will gain an understanding of:

1. Programming in high level languages such as C and Java
2. Interfacing hardware and software
3. The performance of a program and how to improve performance
4. Techniques used to improve performance and energy efficiency for hardware designers
5. Pros and Cons of sequential and parallel processing
6. The great ideas in the computer world

References:

(1) - U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis

(2) - Investopedia