Computing
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Originally, the word computing was synonymous with counting and calculating, and a computer was a person who computes. Since the advent of the electronic computer, it has come to also mean the operation and usage of these machines, the electrical processes carried out within the computer hardware itself. It does not denote the theoretical concepts of creating programs to run on the computers themselves, though there is a subset of computer science that deals with the original sense of computing mathematical calculations.
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Science and theory
- Computer science
- Theory of computation
- Computational models
- DBLP, as of February 2005, now lists over 600 000 bibliographic entries on computer science and several thousand links to the home pages of computer scientists
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Hardware
See information processor for a high-level block diagram.
- Computer hardware
- Computer Hardware Design
- Computer network
- Computer system
- History of computing hardware
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Instruction-level taxonomies
After the commoditization of memory, attention turned to optimizing CPU performance at the instruction level. Various methods of speeding up the fetch-execute cycle include:
- designing instruction set architectures with simpler, faster instructions: RISC as opposed to CISC
- Superscalar instruction execution
- VLIW architectures, which make parallelism explicit
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Software
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History of computing
- History of computing hardware from the tally stick to the quantum computer
- Punch Card
- Unit record equipment
- IBM 700/7000 series
- IBM 1400 series
- System/360
- Early IBM disk storage
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Business computing
- Accounting software
- Computer-aided design
- Computer-aided manufacturing
- Computer-assisted dispatch
- Customer relationship management
- Data warehouse
- Decision support system
- Electronic data processing
- Enterprise resource planning
- Geographic information system
- Management information system
- Material requirements planning
- Strategic enterprise management
- Supply chain management
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Human factors
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Computer security
- Cryptology - cryptography - information theory
- Cracking - demon dialing - Hacking - war dialing - war driving
- Social engineering - Dumpster diving
- Physical security - Black bag job
- Computer insecurity
- Computer surveillance
- defensive programming
- malware
- security engineering
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Data
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Numeric data
- integral data types - bit, byte, etc.
- real data types:
- Decimal
- Binary-coded decimal (BCD)
- Excess-3 BCD (XS-3)
- Biquinary-coded decimal
- representation: Binary - Octal - Decimal - Hexadecimal (hex)
- Computer mathematics - Computer numbering formats -
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Character data
- storage: Character - String - Text - Plain text
- representation: ASCII - Unicode - Multibyte - EBCDIC (Widecharacter, Multicharacter) - Fieldata - Baudot
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Other data topics
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Mechatronics
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Classes of computers
- Analog computer
- Calculator
- Desktop computer
- Desknote
- Digital computer
- Embedded computer
- Home computer
- Laptop
- Mainframe
- Minicomputer
- Microcomputer
- Personal computer
- Personal digital assistant (aka PDA, or Handheld computer)
- Server
- Supercomputer
- Tablet PC
- Video game console
- Workstation
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Companies - current
- Apple Computer
- Avaya
- Dell
- Fujitsu
- Gateway Computers
- Groupe Bull
- Hewlett-Packard
- Hitachi, Ltd.
- IBM
- Microsoft
- NEC Corporation
- Red Hat
- Silicon Graphics
- Sun Microsystems
- Unisys
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Companies - historic
- Acorn, bought by Olivetti
- Bendix Corporation
- Burroughs, merged with UNIVAC to become Unisys
- Compaq, bought by Hewlett-Packard
- Control Data
- Cray
- Data General
- DEC, bought by Compaq, in turn bought by Hewlett-Packard
- Digital Research - a software company for the early microprocessor-based computers
- English Electric
- Ferranti
- General Electric, computer division bought by Honeywell, then Bull
- Honeywell, computer division bought by Bull and
- ICL
- Leo
- Lisp Machines, Inc.
- Marconi
- Nixdorf, bought by Siemens
- Olivetti
- Osborne
- Packard Bell
- Raytheon
- Royal McBee
- RCA
- Scientific Data Systems, sold to Xerox
- Siemens
- Sinclair Research
- Symbolics
- UNIVAC, merged with Burroughs to become Unisys
- Varian
- Wang
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Professional organizations
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- British Computer Society (BCS)
- Association for Survey Computing (ASC)
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), in particular the IEEE Computer Society
- International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
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Standards organizations and consortia
(see also standardization)- International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
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