1999 – AMD releases the AMD K6-III Processor in speeds of 400 and 450 MHz. It would feature a 64KB Level 1 cache and a 256KB Level 2 cache. The 3DNow! graphics instructions would be supported, along with Direct X 6.0. There were 21.3 million transistors on the 0.25 micron process wafer.
1985 – The Cray X-mp/48 Supercomputer begins operation in San Diego Supercomputer Center in California. The $15 million dollar supercomputer could process 400 megaflops (200 per processor). It was a shared-memory parallel vector processor and supported 2 or 4 million 64-bit words of main memory in 16 or 32 banks.
The first Cray didn’t get installed until October 1986.
Cray X-MP/48 replaced the Cray-1. It was succeeded by the Cray Y-MP8/864 in 1990.
Movies such as “the Last Starfighter” were rendered using the Cray Supercomputer.
2001 – One problem with technology is that you hit limitations, mostly due to materials used or how small machines can make parts like transistors. For instance, today’s multi-core x86 processors will eventually be replaced because we won’t be able to put anymore transistors on the die – It’s called “Moores Law“. Intel and AMD work hard to get around this law – which is why x86 technology has been around since the 90’s.One thing scientists do to circumvent is to change the restructure the transistor. In 2001, Intel did just that. They launched the TeraHertz – a new transistor, using several new materials – including Zirconium Dioxide (which is used to reduce leakage issues). The new THz transistors brought processing to a new level; High process tasks like facial recognition could be achieved. The TeraHertz also worked on 0.6 Volts, so it vastly reduced power needs.
Intel expected this technology to be implemented by 2005. However, as to this date, the TeraHertz transistor has not been, nor seems to be planned for implementation in processors.
2011– Steve Jobs passes away in his home at 3 pm Pacific. He went into respritory failure due to the pancreatic cancer he was fighting for over 10 years. Twitter exploded with over 10,000 tweets per second on this event (Osama Bin Laden death was 5,000). Vigils were held in his memory and Cupertino office was plastered with flowers and memories on post-it notes.
1999– The Microprocessor Forum is held in San Jose, California. During the event, Advanced Micro Devices outlines its own x86 64-bit architecture, as well as Lightning Data Transport – Its future system bus. This will become AMD’s eighth-generation microprocessor code-name: Sledgehammer
2014 – Trying to be the first provider of over-the-air channels, Aereo was told to shut down completely after a supreme court decision went against the company.
The idea was simple – take the over-the-air network channels and offer them on the Internet. Based in New York, the company opened services in 24 different cities. You could only watch the programming of your area on your PC, Mac or Linux. There were around 28 channels you could choose from and pricing was simply $1 a day.
Aereo was faced with many legal issues, including the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition act. The rebroadcast through the service undermined cable re-transmission fees.
It was also a wake-up call as after the fact, many cable providers started offering live streaming options.
1984 – Jim Gettys and Bob Scheifler announced collaboration of a new operating system in the X Window System. This gives the basic framework for a GUI. Currently, it is refered to as X11, R7.7.
I’ve spent the last couple weeks writing a window
system for the VS100. I stole a fair amount of code
from W, surrounded it with an asynchronous rather
than a synchronous interface, and called it X. Overall
performance appears to be about twice that of W. The
code seems fairly solid at this point, although there are
still some deficiencies to be fixed up.
We at LCS have stopped using W, and are now
actively building applications on X. Anyone else using
W should seriously consider switching. This is not the
ultimate window system, but I believe it is a good
starting point for experimentation. Right at the moment
there is a CLU (and an Argus) interface to X; a C
interface is in the works. The three existing
applications are a text editor (TED), an Argus I/O
interface, and a primitive window manager. There is
no documentation yet; anyone crazy enough to
volunteer? I may get around to it eventually.
Anyone interested in seeing a demo can drop by
NE43-531, although you may want to call 3-1945
first. Anyone who wants the code can come by with a
tape. Anyone interested in hacking deficiencies, feel
free to get in touch.
1998 – At the beginnings of the AMD / Intel battle, AMD brought out a processor to dual with Pentium II. The AMD K6-2 processor was a Super Socket 7 pin structure, which also was compatible with older Socket 7 motherboards.
With 9.3 million transistors, the K6-2 had a CPU clock rate of 266 to 550 MHz. Of course, these were single-core processors and had front side bus of either 66 or 100 MHz. The K6-2 also featured the MMX and 3DNow! instruction set.
The K6-2+ was added to keep up with Pentium III processors. The processor line only lasted a year and was ultimately replaced with K6 III.
1964– John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz run the first BASIC program at 4 AM in Dartmouth. The duo used a General Electric 225 mainframe computer and ran a simple compiler program. The duo created different programming languages since 1956, including Darsimco (Dartmouth Simplified Code), Dope (Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment). It wasn’t until BASIC (Begginer’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) that became a success.
The first code ran at 4 A.M on May 1st. BASIC was easy to learn, could go past mainframes (as Bill Gates and Paul Allen adapted it for personal computers in 1975), and also allowed for batch processing.