Basics

The preceding sections of this article give some idea of the pervasiveness of computer technology in society. Many products used in everyday life now incorporate computer systems: programmable, computer-controlled VCRs…

The mathematical methods needed for computations in engineering and the sciences must be transformed from the continuous to the discrete in order to be carried out on a computer. For…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of research that goes back to the very beginnings of computer science. The idea of building a machine that can perform tasks perceived as…

File systems of varying degrees of sophistication satisfied the need for information storage and processing for several years. However, large enterprises tended to build many independent files containing related and…

File storage Computers have been used since the 1950s for the storage and processing of data. An important point to note is that the main memory of a computer provides…

The allocation of system resources to various tasks, known as job scheduling, is a major assignment of the operating system. The system maintains prioritized queues of jobs waiting for CPU…

Development of operating systems In early computers, the user typed programs onto punched tape or cards, from which they were read into the computer. The computer subsequently assembled or compiled…

Early languages Programming languages are the languages in which a programmer writes the instructions that the computer will ultimately execute. The earliest programming languages were assembly languages, not far removed…

Computer programs, the software that is becoming an ever-larger part of the computer system, are growing more and more complicated, requiring teams of programmers and years of effort to develop.…

Multiprocessor design Creating a multiprocessor from a number of uniprocessors (one CPU) requires physical links and a mechanism for communication among the processors so that they may operate in parallel.…