MIS 300 Management Information Systems

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MIS 300 Management Information Systems

• Computer Hardware Technology
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is
  indistinguishable from magic.
• -- Arthur C. Clarke

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A Bit about Hardware

• A Little History
• Basic Model of a Computer
• Bits and Bytes
• Processors and Memory
• Secondary Storage
• I/O
• Types of Computers

• Themes
• Suitability to business task
• Its good to know a little about the underlying
  technology
• Computing trends

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Like Architecture

• Systems Analysis
• requirements analysis
• data modeling
• process modeling
• business logic modeling
• feasibility studies

• Systems Design
• database design
• program design
• user interface design
• hardware selection
• system software selection
• application software selection

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Why learn about technology?

• Demystification is first step to understanding
• Technology plays crucial role in supporting
  business processes and business decision making
• Understanding of technology helps you make
  informed choices about technology purchase,
  creation and use
• Goes right along with systems thinking

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Different Types of Computers
Speed and storage cost
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Dimensions of IT Performance

• Functional capabilities
• Capacity, speed, price-performance, reliability,
  operating conditions
• Ease of use
• User interface, gaining proficiency, portability
• Compatibility
• Conformance to standards, interoperability
• Maintainability
• Modularity, scalability, flexibility

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A Few Milestone Events in Computer Hardware
History

• 2600B.C. Chinese invent the abacus
• 1621 Slide rule (used into the 1970s)
• 1679 Leibitz binary math
• 1822 Babbages Difference Engine
• 1890 U.S. Census bureau uses electric
  tabulating system by Hollerith (8 yrs to 2 yrs)
• 1896 Hollerith forms Tabulating Machine
  Company, later becomes ?

• 1904 vacuum tubes
• 1943-45 U.S. Army builds ENIAC
• 1943 British build Colossus for code breaking
• 1945 John Von Neumann lays out theoretical
  architecture for computers as we know them
• 1947 Shockley invents the transistor
• 1954 Texas Instruments could produce silicon
  transistors commercially. IBM had 1st mass
  produced computer.
• 1958 TI makes 1st integrated circuit
• 1969 Intel designs early microchip

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A Few Milestone Events...

• 1975 Popular Electronics magazine featured the
  Altair 8800, the first PC
• 367
• Parts in a bag
• no keyboard switches instead
• no monitor small lights instead
• 4000 orders in a few weeks
• 1976 - The Steves (Wozniak and Jobs) introduce
  the Apple
• Radio Shack, Commodore, others...

• 1981 IBM PC
• 16K RAM, 5.25 in floppy
• 1982 Compaq first IBM compatible
• 1984 the Macintosh
• 1985 80386 32bit CPU
• 1993 Pentium introduced
• ... faster and faster, cheaper and cheaper,
  smaller and smaller, more connected and more
  connected, more mainstream and more mainstream...

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Basic Model of A Computer System

• A Computer
• Accept input
• Perform computational functions
• Communicate results

System bus 16bit, 32 bit, 64 bit lanes on the
highway

• CPU
• Arithmetic-Logic Unit
• Control Unit

• Input Devices
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Touch Screen

• Secondary Storage
• Hard disk
• floppy, Zip, Jaz, CD, DVD
• Tape

• Output Devices
• Printers
• Monitors
• Audio

• Communication Devices
• Buses - internal
• Ports - external

Primary Storage RAM
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Execution of an InstructionThe CPU

• move data to/from registers
• get program instructions and tell ALU what to do

math and logical comparisons
small and near memory for data and
instructions
RAM

• currently running programs
• hundreds to millions of data items

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Internal System Clock

• Digital circuit that generates and transmits
  timing pulses (clock ticks)
• Frequency of clock ticks is commonly called
  clock speed
• measured in cycles per second (hertz)
• Example 1GHz processors are common now
• Computer instructions operate at a speed
  proportional to clock speed
• Clock speed is one indicator of computing speed
  but not only indicator

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Measuring Frequency
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Speed of Executing Instructions

• MIPS million instructions per second
• Reduced Instruction Set Computing or RISC)
  (apples) vs. Complex ISC or CISC (oranges)
• FLOPS floating point operations per second
• , -, , / of decimals (e.g. 123.45 5.6 /
  12.2984)
• somewhat more tangible metric

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Moores LawGordon Moore, founder of Intel
Transistor density on microchips has doubled
roughly ever 18-24 months. Implications for cost
of speed and cost of storage. Predictions that
physical limits may be reached in 2010-2020.
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Benchmark TestingExample Windows XP Home

• 3-D WinBench
• graphics adaptor
• graphics driver
• Direct 3D Software
• data bus
• Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) slot (faster
  memory access and faster graphics handling)

www.pcmag.com
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CPUs
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Sequential vs. Parallel Processing
Program
Task 1
Program
CPU
Result
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
Program
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Task 4
Task 2
CPU
Result
Result
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Computerese - Bits and Bytes

• Bit a binary digit (0 or 1), an on/off switch
  or transistor
• machine language, binary notation, base-2
• Byte 8 bits
• Can represent 0-255
• 1 byte per character, 256 characters

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Numbers and Letters with 0s 1s

• American Standard Code for Information
  Interchange ASCII
• a vendor independent standard for character
  coding
• support data communications between computers and
  peripheral devices (Input/Output)
• Letters, numbers, other keyboard characters
  (including nonprintable), device control
  characters (e.g. line feed, delete, form feed,
  bell)
• Unicode a newer16 bit coding table (0..65535)
• many non-English alphabets included

Lets look at ASCII using Excel
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Addition and multiplication tables for binary
numbers
Lets look at a binary computer
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(No Transcript)
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Numeric data types in Access
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Primary Storage

• RAM random access memory
• readable and writeable
• Volatile no energy, no data
• Large and fast
• Can have large impact on PC performance
• ROM read only memory
• Non-volatile
• Permanent storage for non-changing items such as
  programs and data for hardware

Make sure you know what kind your computer uses
if you do a RAM upgrade.
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Storing 0s 1s with electricity
Capacitors store charge
An on/off switch
How Computers Work by White (QUE)
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Addressing RAMA Simplified Representation
One byte Per location
(9,2)
Address
ASCII code for A
8 bits/byte
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Secondary Storage

• Non-volatile place to keep electronic information
• Many, many types of secondary storage suited for
  different tasks
• speed, cost capacity, portability, access
  method
• Cost of storage has plummeted roughly in
  accordance to Moores Law

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Measuring storage capacity and file size
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Just a few options

• Hard drives
• Magnetic tape
• Floppy disks
• Zip disks
• Jaz, Peerless disks
• CD-R, CD-RW
• DVD-RW

• big, fast, magnetic, affordable
• slow, sequential access
• small, unreliable, convenient
• super floppies
• almost removable hard drives
• inexpensive, relatively high capacity

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Hard Drives

• Multiple metal disks and multiple read/write
  heads
• Several thousand RPMs
• Heads extremely close to disks
• Files may be spread across multiple clusters
• Defragmentation?
• File allocation table keeps track of where pieces
  of files are stored
• Hard disk controller
• Multiple hard drives in a single computer is OK

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How Data Represented on Optical Disks (CD/DVD)
A 1 bit value
transparent layer
reflective layer
plastic substrate
focused
A 0 bit value
transparent layer
reflective layer
plastic substrate
scattered
How Computers Work by White (QUE)
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More Data on DVD
1
0
Laser beam length altered by current to read the
different layers on the disk.
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The CD DVD Potpourri
Adapted from Table 5-7 in System Architecture
by Burd (Course Technology)
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Storage Cost ComparisonOctober 2001
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Digitizing images and sounds
The more cells in the grid, the better quality
the digitized image.
Amplitude of sound wave must be sampled many
times per second to approximate the continuous
wave with digital bits.
HCW p195
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Simplistic Digitization of an Image
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Input/Output Devices

• Keyboard and mouse
• Voice-recognition devices
• Digital Computer Cameras
• Terminals
• Scanning Devices

• Point-of-Sale (POS) Devices
• Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) Devices
• Touch Sensitive Screens
• Bar Code Scanners

• Display Monitors
• Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)
• Printers and Plotters
• Speakers

Output
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Many Factors Affect Effective Computer Speed

• Clock speed
• Internal data transfer speed
• Hard disk access speed
• Amount of random access memory (why?)
• Operating system
• Intensity of software application
• Network transmission speed (e.g. modem, phone
  lines, Ethernet, cable, etc.)

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Measuring Time
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Making Computers Faster

• Miniaturize and integrate
• Streamlining the machines language
• RISC
• Faster storage devices
• Parallel processing
• 8 bit gt 16 bit gt 32 bit gt 64 bit word size, bus
  and memory addressing

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Cheap Supercomputing
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The Business Perspective

• What does the organization want to accomplish?
• What combination of available hardware and
  software provides the capability and at what
  cost?
• Warning Shopping for the right technology can
  be a daunting, confusing experience