Understanding Digital Computers

Understanding Failures in Petascale Computers

With petascale computers only a year or two away there is a pressing need to anticipate and compensate for a probable increase in failure and application interruption rates. Researchers, designers and integrators have available to them far too little detailed information on the failures and interruptions that even smaller terascale computers experience. The information that is available suggest...

Systems Simulation with Digital Computers

A machine-independent examination of the associated programming problem i s conducted and illustrated by means of a n example. Finally, the nature and application of simulation languages are noted. By system, we have in mind the meaning accorded by Webster, " a set of objects united by some form of regular interaction or interdependence. " Change in a system is regarded as change in the propert...

The History of Digital Computers

This account describes the history of the development of digital computers, from the work of Charles Babbage to the earliest electronic stored program computers, It has been prepared for Volume 3 of " l'Histoire Générale des Techniques, " and is in the main based on the introductory text written by the author for the book " The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers " (Springer Verlag, 1...

Performance of Digital Neuro-computers

This paper deals with performance measurement and evaluation of digital neuro-computers. We discuss the constraints introduced by hardware implementations. A revisited deenition of computer speed-up is then proposed, taking into account both the traditional notion of parallelization speed-up and the algorithmic precision of the machines. Finally we show, on the example of the Kohonen feature ma...

Asynchronous Signals in Digital Computers