(a) Describe the differences between each of the following "categories of computers" : (i) mainframe, (ii) minicomputer, (iii)

microcomputer or personal computers.

A mainframe computer means a computer that can support thousands of applications, input/output devices that will serve thousands of users. It is usually bulk in sizes, unchanged even through different generations of mainframe. The market for mainframe computers is dominated by IBMs Company especially through their Z mainframe series. A mainframe largely differs in organization, including the capability of running through system even when a new system is added without interrupts. It is also worth noted that mainframe specialization in virtualization or in another word, running through multiple virtual computers in a single machine. The Intel Xeon and Itanium processors are popular among mainframe as its attributes as a server processor. Somehow, IBM also managed to develop their more cost-saving, homegrown CPU as a strategy for their series of mainframes. Among the three type of computer, mainframe has the fastest processor. Its input output devices are more sophisticated and also an addition of clustered system being utilized. Mainframe computers are mainly used in the area of business or transaction, hence the definition Transaction Processing Performance Council. This is the main reason on why mainframes highly emphasized the importance of data access security and wide ranged backup maneuvers. A rather correct definition for mainframe is a computer that hosts commercial databases, transaction server and applications a high level of security and availability and of course reliable. Meanwhile, a minicomputer simply suggests a computer that sits between a mainframe and a minicomputer, or a simply wording midrange. Unfortunately, minicomputers only survived through 1980s in the mainstream market due to the introduction of low cost microprocessors and microcomputers. One of the widely known minicomputer on that time scale is the DEC PDP-8 which runs on a 12-bit processors. DEC(Digital Equipments Corporation) only been second to IBM as the largest company in the 1980s timescale. Among the operating system used in minicomputers are FORTRAN and Basic. Generally said, minicomputers are a form of mainframe with a largely reduced scale. They run on multiprocessors, operating systems and dedicated internal central processor. They served the purpose of scientific and business operations but on a more practical usage. One example of minicomputers processor is the 74181 ALU of the 7400 series. It is 4 bit wide, but the gradually challenged by the PDPs 12 bit and Data Central Nova 16 bit processors.

Lastly, microcomputers, or the commonly used term PC (Personal Computer) stands as the most consumed type of computer nowadays. Back in the early introduction of microcomputers, the small sized organization and architecture made it more individual based usage rather than large scale users. The term micro is based on the microprocessor used for their organization. It is also noted that microcomputer replaced the many separate components that made up the minicomputer's CPU with one integrated microprocessor chip. One of the early processor introduced for the microcomputer is the Intel chip 8008, an 8-bit processor running 0.8MHz clock speed. Current year processors could empower the PC up to 4GHz of clock speed or more, and plus running with multiple cores. As for serving purpose, PC is developed mainly for data processing. Through the years, microcomputers have achieved importance roles of minicomputer virtualization for software development, higher level computing, and also moderate graphic rendering.

(b) Describe the differences between each of the following "types of computers" : (i) notebooks, (ii) desktop, (iii) tablets and (iv) smartphones
There are several aspects that need to be conveyed in comparing notebooks, desktop, tablets and smartphones. That includes mainly of power, portability, storage, connectivity , data entry and also user input. However, among those aspects, some of them cannot be directly compared. It is also to be noted here that, desktop and laptops share some traits together, so one of them might be mentioned in the aspects. The first important aspect is the power. Power defined from the processing speed, memory width and power consumption. Clearly desktop is the clear cut high end as it is driven by its own power supply and separate peripherals on the mainboard. Laptop should have the same processing power, but some Intel chips are modified to adept mobile architecture in laptops or notebooks. Latest batch released from Intel that widely used in desktops are the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge that are the core I releases. Even with the rising processing power of tablets and smartphones, that had developed to multiple cores and some dedicated GPU onboard, they are still several level behind desktop and laptops in terms of power. Mobile processors such as the ARM processor are designed to consume as low as 4 watt on full load. This is to compliment the short battery life. And such processing power is limited. If smartphones and tablets are to have processor as powerful as the desktop, which would consume 6 watt at idle, the new Samsung Galaxy 4 would last for an hour. Moores law does not apply to battery life. The latest smartphones and tablets now have the ARM Cortex A9 processor, while Apple Ipad can boast their homegrown A6x processors for tablets. Second aspect is the cost comparison for each computer. Desktops and laptops varied highly in their price range. With a budget of RM1500, you could find some decent performance desktop already. Add another RM500; you will hit yourself with Corei5 laptops with dedicated graphic memory. With the high ends smartphones and tablets on the market price now, you will have to spend around RM2500 to get Ipad 2 and Samsung Note 3. It could be said that those prices were quite inflated in Malaysia as we need to import them rather than having locally made factory for laptops and desktops. The third aspect is portability. Desktops have zero portability. The tower are big and bulky, monitor need to separately attached, other input output devices share the same fate too. You would rather place a desktop on a place where it belongs, on a desk. However, laptops which have almost the same hardware power are smoothly portable. Screens and keyboard attached, spreadsheet drivers would love doing their works on laptops. Some higher end models would have longer battery life. And some 19 models would feel a bit bulky too and their weight could almost reach 2kg. Smartphones are a bit bigger than the average phones but is highly portable.

They would fit in almost any pockets and have the screen size up to 4.8. Keyboard is touch optional and speakers are all onboard. Simple tasks such as replying email, organizing schedule watching movies would be suitable for smartphones. The only major difference of tablets from smartphones is their screen size of 10. People tend to carry them like mini laptops. The larger screen size provides a bigger and more comfortable workspace. Next is the memory storage. Desktops and laptops storage had reach over one terabyte (1TB) of memory drive. The bigger allocation is respective to the upgraded media distribution. Movies and games nowadays can be as big as 12 GB each. Certainly most smartphones and tablets could not handle those types of High Definition media. Currently, they could have up to 64GB built in memory and additional memory slot. To comply with their usage, such memory space is justified, as also processor and memory access speed they possess would not be sufficient to allocate much more than that. Connectivity is also one of the aspects that must be covered. Desktops rarely have built in network adapter. Those could be expanded through PCI expansion card or rather the faster USB Wi-Fi adapter. Laptops on the contrary have wireless card readily available. For both of them, stable high speed broadband connection is preferable. Connecting to phone network would require them external modem or phone directly tethering to the pc. Smartphones and tablets are at the advantage of mobile internet. As long the signal strength is good enough. However, mobile internet revolutionized faster than broadband. Latest model phones are available to LTE or the 4G network. Tablets tend to have more stable and faster connection than most smartphones. Lastly, operating system(OS) is the main interface between user and computer. Both desktops and laptops offer full-fledged operating system, such as Windows, OSx and multiples Linux Distribution. They are ideal for software developer and programmer, to such extend, and create application to be used on mobile OS. This is because they have sufficient computing power and memory allocation. Smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy S4 and the latest Iphone installment operates through Android OS and IOS respectively. In addition, some windows phone runs one scaled down version of Windows. Android OS are open source, creating thousands of apps to be downloaded, either free or paid, while IOS only limits their apps to Apple user.

(c) Describe the similarities and differences between processors manufactured by (i) Intel (ii) AMD in terms of their organization and architecture

Intel and AMD rivalries started almost 40 years ago, where the latter started the business a year after Intel had established. In terms of microarchitecture, both chips have a lots of similarities but some differences existed as different approach is emphasized. Basically, you can drop in an AMD CPU + motherboard in a unit that previously had an Intel CPU and motherboard and unless you look in the system properties to see what CPU is in there, you'd be hard-pressed to tell any difference. It would be appropriate to list down first the family models of each release of AMD and Intel. . They are ordered by level of performance in an ascending order: AMD for Desktop: Sempron, Athlon, Phenom, A-Series, FX AMD for Server: Opteron AMD x86 microarchitecture roadmap after K10: K10 -> Turion X2 Ultra -> Fusion -> Bobcat -> Bulldozer Intel for Desktop: Celeron, Pentium, i3, i5, i7 Intel for Server: Itanium, Xeon E3, Xeon 5000, Xeon E5, Xeon E7 Intel x86 microarchitecture roadmap after P5: P5 -> P6 -> Core -> Nehalem -> Sandy Bridge -> Haswell -> Skylake As we go along the comparison, specific model will be stated as the equilibrium of performance and cost would make the statement valid. From top level of view, we could say both AMD and Intel chips are functionally identical. From x86 architectures, multilevel cache arrangement, transistors size, clock speed and also performance, only approaches that differs between them. Several aspects that could matter in comparing them includes instruction set architecture, memory hierarchy, memory optimization and also pipelining. It is worth noted that AMD and Intel are frequently compared by their general design. Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) and Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) are terminology involved when discussing about instruction set architecture. The x86 architecture implementation that started 30 years ago, are included in Intel i3/i5/i7, AMD Phenom, AMD Athlon. However, modern chips are said to have combination of RISC and CISC. Therefore, both

of them have the advantage of this combination design. Thus, enabling both chips to run 32bit and 64bit system. Next is the memory hierarchy or memory design. Models from both manufacturer that are exampled in this matter are the FX-8320/8150 vs i7 2600. AMD FX-8150 Clockspeed Microarchitecture Cores L1 cache 3.6GHz .4.2GHz Turbospeed. Bulldozer 8 cores 4 modules 256 KB(I) 128 KB(D) 64KB per module(I) 16KB per core(D) 2-way set associative 4*2 MB Each 2MB is shared between 2 cores in one module 16-way associative 8 MB all core shared 64-way associative 21 GB/s 48-bit virtual and physical addresses not known Intel i7 2600 3.4GHz . 3.8GHz Turbospeed. Sandy Bridge 4 cores 4*32 KB(I) 4*32 KB(D) 4-way associative for instructions 8-way associative for data 4*256 KB Each 256KB is private to each core 8-way associative 8MB all core shared 16-way associative 21 GB/s 48-bit virtual addresses and 36-bit physical addresses L1: virtually indexed and physically tagged L2: physically indexed L3: physically indexed

L2 cache

L3 cache

Max memory bandwidth Virtual & physical memory addresses How caches are indexed

From the table above, we can conclude that both AMD and Intel share almost the same memory design. Both have multiple levels of caches. This particular design in chips is important to aid processor to fetch data quickly and avoid misses. There are a few discrete differences between the two chips, and as stated earlier, it is mainly because of approach. Performance-wise, it is not affected that much. Intel and AMD chips need

to have different socket to be slotted on the mainboard, meaning only one mainboard for one type of processors. Latest generation of processor also involves different integration of socket. Older processor would not fit to the latest mainboard socket. Each of sockets also subjected to different heat sink mounting mechanism. Although certain aftermarket heatsinks can fit both type of chips. The Core i7s have Hyper Threading technology, meaning the processor can double the physical cores into logical cores, ie. 4 cores processor will have 8 logical cores. All modern AMD processors have an onboard memory controller, while only the Intel chips to have one is the i7. The rest of Intel's CPUs have a front side bus. As for comparison, we can conclude that both manufacturer use similar design concepts. The reason why the price of AMD is lower than Intel is that its performance is not as good as Intel processor. Also by comparison, those specifications indicate that having more core and pipeline stages does not necessarily bring better performance. The reason Bulldozer has more cores may be because its individual core is not as good as i7s.

(d) What is ARM architecture. Explain why processors using ARM architecture are popular among tablets and smartphones.
ARM is derived from the words Advanced RISC Machines. It was first developed by Acorn Computers back in 1980. The architecture for ARM is based from Reduced Instruction Set Computer(RISC). Acorn Computers, Apple and VLSI Technology then introduced ARM holdings in 1992. Generally said, an ARM processor consists of load/store architecture, an orthogonal instruction set, single-cycle execution, a 16x32 bit register and most importantly, power saving design. We could find an ARM processor in almost mobile devices nowadays. The first ever ARM processor is the ARM1 with ARMv1 architecture to the latest ARMv7-A architecture. Initial releases by ARM was to compete the x86 monopoly back then. The 32 bit architecture for arm consists of 3 profiles: Application profile(Cortex A-series), Real-time profile(Cortex-R series) and Microcontroller profile(Cortex-M) series. ARM also introduced their 64 bit architecture named ARMv8-A, later in the market. The latest Samsung Galaxy S4 is powered by the ARM Cortex-A15 and Cortex A-7. One discrete aspects of ARM marketing is its core licensing availability which enable 3rd party to develop their on processor based on ARM architecture. Thus, the introduction of Apple A6, Krait, A6x and much more. The key for ARM architecture popularity in mobile devices is its low power consumption and low cost. This important aspect created a gap from Intel x86 chips. If you count how many ARM processors in every smartphones, tablets and laptops today, they outnumbered Intel chip 4 to 1. To enforce this issue, ARM really focused on low power consumption from the beginning. That aspect alone makes it greatly desirable for mobile devices, as battery consumption will be minimized. ARM business model is also fueling to this success. They license their technology than manufacturing their own chips. Many chips with ARM processors include things such as A/D converters, counter/timers, capacitive touch controllers, LCD controllers, USB, Wifi baseband, etc. ARM chips now had built in function to disable idle peripherals, leading to more power saving usage, rather than including separate power management modules into devices. The wider variety of ARM processor also benefits the consumer in a way that you could find a device that suits the certain function it needs rather than adding a second chip for such purpose. This saves on parts cost, design time, and physical space on the circuit board.

(d) Prepare a table of comparisons to compare the processors used in tablets and smartphones in term of the type of ARM processors (eg: cortex A8 etc) , number of cores (1, 2 ,4 etc) and types of system on a chip that they are using (eg: Snapdragon etc).
ARM processors Samsung Galaxy S4 Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 (GTI9500 ) Krait 300 (GT-I9505 ) dual-core Octa-core Cortex-A15 Cortex-A7 (GSM version) Krait 400 (LTE version) Krait 300 Krait 300 Number Of Cores 4 4 4 System on A Chip (SOC) Samsung Exynos 5 Octa (GT-I9500 ) Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 (GT-I9505 ) Apple A7 Exynos 5 Octa 5420(GSM version) Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 (LTE version)

Iphone 5s SMARTPHONES Samsung Galaxy Note 3

2 4 4 4

HTC One Nexus 7 Samsung Galaxy Tab 3.10.1 TABLETS Apple Ipad 2 Nexus 10

4 4

Intel Atom 2 Z2560 SoC processor

Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 (GT-I9505 ) Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 ProAPQ80641AA Intel Atom Z2560 SoC processor

ARM Cortex-A9 Cortex-A15

2 2

Apple A5 Samsung Exynos 5250

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer http://www.mainframes360.com/2009/06/what-is-mainframe-computer.html http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-a-minicomputer.htm http://www.techopedia.com/definition/4615/minicomputer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_160A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcomputer http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Microcomputer.html http://www.google.com/patents/US4471428 http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/51333-34-tablet-smartphone-compare-desktop#. http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/why-your-smartphone-wont-be-your-next-pc/ http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-tablet-and-smartphone http://www.pcworld.com/article/243132/tablets_vs_laptops_vs_smartphones.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/198305/laptop_vs_netbook_vs_smartphone.html http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/260918-28-intel-architecture http://www.programcreek.com/2012/12/amd-versus-intel-successes-and-pitfalls-of-theirprocessor-architectures/ http://www.itpro.co.uk/desktop-hardware/19975/intel-haswell-vs-amd-richland-head-head http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture http://www.arm.com/products/processors/instruction-set-architectures/index.php http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141086/why-does-arm-processorsdominate-mobile-platforms-while-x86-dominates-desktop-se http://techland.time.com/2012/07/16/arm-vs-intel-how-the-processor-wars-will-benefitconsumers-most/ http://www.arm.com/products/processors/selector.php