The History Of The Computer System

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

UMAR HAMZAT

Many people have attempted to define what exactly cloud computing is and the most important and unique characteristic it presents. Buyya et al define cloud as follow: "cloud is a parallel and distributed computing system, consisting of a collection of inter connected and virtualized computers that are dynamically provisioned and presented as one or more unified computing resources based on service-level agreements (SLA) established through negotiation between the service provider and consumer".

The term cloud computing is used to describe the technology used in accessing large amounts of computing power in a fully virtualized manner by integrating resources and offering a single system view. The same concept also applies by plugging an electric device into an outlet on the wall not knowing how the power is been generated nor how the power gets to the outlet, which is possible only because it is virtualized, i.e. power is available at the outlet while hiding away the power stations and distribution grids. There are several other definitions to cloud computing and most definition have characteristics which includes: resources that are virtualized, pay per use (delivering computing as utility), elastic capacity and the illusion of infinite resources.

There are three main categories of cloud computing services namely: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Software as a Service (SaaS) is a process whereby applications are processed over the internet rather than on a local computing device or in a local data centre, for example using online photo editor like pixlr, online invoicing application such zoho. Platform as a service (PaaS) is a software environment used to develop and run applications. When someone decide to cloud compute using platform as a service provided by the cloud computing vendor, it is on this provided platform that the person will develop and deliver his/her own applications. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a process whereby cloud computing vendor provides online infrastructures which enables customers to store data and develop applications as they please. This kind of cloud computing gives customers the opportunity to be free from the use of local servers and data centres.

Nowadays, the fact that computing can be delivered totally over the internet as an utility has changed many things, resulting into many organisations having to change the way the way they the deliver services to their consumers, which is very a good opportunity to small and medium businesses because cloud computing allows small and medium businesses to use world class infrastructures without having to purchase world class hardware and also maintaining large support team. Government institutions are also adopting computing for various reasons especially in the current economic climate, many government institution have seen their budget reduced significantly and they also have to look for ways to still offer the same services they used to offer and at the same time cut cost. This is where cloud computing comes in, it offers the government institution the ability to be able to build shared cloud environment which can be used by many public institutions and also the building of cloud environment to stimulate economic activity in a certain region. Companies in financial sector are also adopting cloud computing for certain workloads by moving traditional development and test environment which are usually underutilized to cloud based models which in essence improves agility and efficiency. Telecommunication companies too are also adopting cloud computing in different way. In recognising the importance of cloud computing, most telecommunication companies want to become a cloud provider and provide cloud computing services to residential and especially enterprise customers. IBM developed the cloud service provider platform (CSP2), a package of hardware, software and services required to deliver a wide range of cloud offerings to telecommunication customers. Another sector that is adopting the use of cloud computing is the education sector, by using desktop cloud environment students can have fully managed virtual PC and access it through a thin client and it makes it less prone to hardware failures than a standard computer, and this reduces the risk faced by the PC’s which are usually not treated in a good manner especially by those in the primary schools. Researchers also use cloud computing to share vast amount of computing resources among a large number of users.

A cloud vendor is a company that offers some component of cloud computing typically Infrastructure as a Service, Software as a Service or Platform as a Service to other businesses or individuals. There are lots of cloud vendors available such as Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Citrix, IBM, Joyent, Google, Microsoft, Rackspace, Salesforce.com and Verizon/Terremark.

There are numbers of factors businesses and individual evaluates before using a cloud vendors such as the cost which is usually based on pay per use utility, the reliability and location of the servers and most importantly the level of security of data that will be stored on the servers.

There are lots of benefits associated with cloud computing both to individual and businesses such as, businesses are been able to easily expand (elasticity) when the need to arises and can equally scale down a service when it is no longer needed. With cloud computing, businesses do not need to own infrastructure and this enables businesses to do away with the capital expenditure and the ability for business to be able to the cloud infrastructures on pay per use basis (utility) reduces capital expenditures of businesses. Cloud enables businesses to reduce power and office space usage. Cloud offers businesses the ability to be able to access the cloud regardless of location and device as long as the device is connected to the internet. Moving applications to cloud helps free up spaces on existing infrastructure and this enables businesses to invest on new projects. With the ability of the cloud to provide multiple redundant sites, it helps in facilitating businesses continuity and disaster recovery scenario. With cloud computing the provider in responsible for the server maintenances creating free time for businesses for other tasks. Cloud enables colleagues at work to work on documents and shared applications wherever they are simultaneously thereby collaboration between colleagues. No data is lost in the case of breakdown on business infrastructure since it is stored in the cloud and can be access on any device through the internet. Cloud computing enable small businesses to be able to compete with larger businesses since the cloud offers top of the class infrastructure. Cloud enables businesses to use only the server space needed for their activities and this reduces businesses carbon footprint (environment friendly).

Cloud also give small businesses the opportunity to access lots of applications, which will be very expensive for them to pay for, if they are to purchase the applications, install and at the same maintain on their personal infrastructure.

As there are many benefits to the use of cloud computing, there are two clearly noticeable underlying issues with the use of cloud computing. The first one is the issue of security associated with the data stored in the cloud. It has been the concern of most businesses that how secure are the data they are entrusting to the third party knowing that cloud servers can be accessed by anyone from anywhere. To ease the concern of businesses about the security issues concerning data stored on the cloud, cloud vendors developed password protected account and encryption when send sending to and fro from the cloud servers. The second noticeable underlying issue with is dependency, inability of businesses to influence maintenances levels and fix frequency and also there are no easy migration to another CPS.

In conclusion, the concept behind cloud computing is to deliver computer operations as an utility and pay for it the same way as electricity, water and other utilities that are charged on pay as you use basis and at the same time cutting cost and also making business operation simpler. If one looks deeper into how cloud works you will see close similarities with the supply mode of other utilities like water and electricity. And this idea simply is virtualization. Virtualization in the sense that we use services not having to bother about the production and the delivery methods. All we have to do is plug the device into the outlet and power is supplied or open the tap and water flows. This kind of concept in computing has given consumer the opportunity to have access to large amounts of applications which was not available to them before the arrival of cloud computing. An example of a cloud application is Dropbox which enables users to save file and open it whenever and wherever.

The human brains is doing the same thing the computer is doing when it comes to data interpretation. For the human body to interpret images, sound, text or whatever it has to interpret, the human body converts the data into electrical impulse which in that form can be interpreted by the human brain which is then transported to the human brain through the nervous system for interpretation. In the case of computer systems, the computer represent data electrically and then interpret the data using electrical switches (on and off) which can be represented using binary numbers (one’s and zero’s).

Binary number system is system used by the computer devices to store data, process data and also to transmit data which makes it possible for consumers to use products like ipods, GPS devices, cell phones and computers. Binary number system uses the base 2 numbering system and binary number has one very important importance which is its resistance to not making errors because if it’s not off then it has to be on.

For the computer to process character data which is composed of words such as, people’s name, addresses and so on. The computer uses the American standard code for information interchange (ASCII) scheme to change the data from text to binary numbers. Below is an example of ASCII scheme table for alphabets.

ASCII Alphabet Characters

Symbol

Decimal

Binary

A

65

01000001

B

66

01000010

C

67

01000011

D

68

01000100

E

69

01000101

F

70

01000110

G

71

01000111

H

72

01001000

I

73

01001001

J

74

01001010

K

75

01001011

L

76

01001100

M

77

01001101

N

78

01001110

O

79

01001111

P

80

01010000

Q

81

01010001

R

82

01010010

S

83

01010011

T

84

01010100

U

85

01010101

V

86

01010110

W

87

01010111

X

88

01011000

Y

89

01011001

Z

90

01011010

Symbol

Decimal

Binary

a

97

01100001

b

98

01100010

c

99

01100011

d

100

01100100

e

101

01100101

f

102

01100110

g

103

01100111

h

104

01101000

i

105

01101001

j

106

01101010

k

107

01101011

l

108

01101100

m

109

01101101

n

110

01101110

o

111

01101111

p

112

01110000

q

113

01110001

r

114

01110010

s

115

01110011

t

116

01110100

u

117

01110101

v

118

01110110

w

119

01110111

x

120

01111000

y

121

01111001

z

122

01111010

http://www.kerryr.net/pioneers/ascii2.htm

From the table above we can convert text to binary number system the same way it will be represented in the computer. The word "BOY" will be represented in the computer as 01000010 01001111 01011001, what the computer has done is that it represent each character with 8 bit binary code.

For the computer to convert an image to binary numbers, the computer has to digitize the components the image is made up of. Digitized images are made of tiny dots called pixels and each pixels has its own representation in the binary number system according to its colour code. So therefore, a digitized image is the collection of all binary numbers for all pixels contained in the image.

Sound are ongoing or continuous analog sound waves, sound can be created in different ways such as talking, beating a drum etc. Any data in the analog form is data that can only be measured but not counted. If an analog data has to transmitted over a communication medium, it can only be transmitted provided that the communication medium supports analog transmission if not, it has to be converted to the type of data the communication medium supports before transmission. For example, analog music broadcasted by digital radio station had to be converted to digital before been broadcasted and also digital data sent over a conventional analog telephone had to be converted to analog before transmission. For the computer to store analog data which can only be measured but not counted, the computer have to convert the analog data into discrete form which is 0’s and 1’s (binary number). And what the computer does to convert analog data to digital data is that its samples the analog data at different points and then converting the points to digital number which can then be stored by the computer since the analog data has be digitalized. The more the computer sample the analog data, the more points the computer get and the closer the computer get to in approximating a wavelength pattern. The digitalization of analog data happen in four stages which are filtering, sampling, quantizing and coding of digital signals. To transmit digital data over conventional telephone network, modem is used to convert the digital to analog using the modulator (sets of code) and demodulator to convert it back to digital data at the other end.

For computer to store video files, the computer will be dealing with two type of files in one file which are the sound file and motion image file. To convert the video file to binary number system which is the language the computer understands, the computer will filter, sample, quantize and code the audio part of the video file and for the image part, the computer assigns binary codes to each pixel according to the colour code. The computer regenerates the video files to its original state to play it on support players.

The computer microprocessor is similar to the human brain because it controls all the activity of the computer, the microprocessor is responsible for all calculations, logic and instruction. The microprocessor processes all data passing through the computer, without the microprocessors computers will not exist.

Single core microprocessor is the earliest types of microprocessors. Single core microprocessor have one core and it means that it can only process an instruction at a time, which makes the computer very slow when dealing with multiple sets of instructions. Example of single core microprocessors are AMD 3800 and Athlon 3700.

Multicore processors is a kind of processor in which all processors are resident on the same chip. Multicore processor is a multiple instruction, multiple data multi-processor. In multicore processor different cores execute different thread operations on different part of the memory. A multicore processor have more than one core and each core contains arithmetic logic unit, memory register and bus interface. The aim of the multicore processor is to run more than one task simultaneously and thereby achieve greater overall system performance. Example of multicore processors are AMD phenom 11 X 4 and Intel core Duo.

Hyper threading is a technology used by some microprocessors which enable the microprocessor to act like two separate processors to the operating system and application program that uses it. Hyper threading allows the microprocessor to run demanding applications simultaneously while maintaining system resources. It helps to keep the system protected while minimizing impact on productivity. Examples of hyper threading empowered microprocessors are Intel core i3-3210 processor, Intel i5-3380M processor, Intel core i7-3537U processors, Intel Atom processor s1240, Intel itanium processor 9950.