Friday, December 28, 2012

Plays nicely

A co-routine is a procedure that executes a different part of its task each time it is run.  There can be one or more co-routines in progress within a system. Co-routines can be used for simulation programs and routines modeled as finite-state machines.
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Monday, December 17, 2012

Finite-state machines

Finite-state machines are a mathematical abstraction for modeling computable functions and grammars for formal (programming) languages.There are four major types of finite state machines corresponding to the types of formal languages
  • Finite-state automata, corresponding to Type 3 (regular) languages
  • Pushdown automata, corresponding ot Type 2 (context-free) languages
  • Linear bounded automata, corresponding to type 1 (context-sensitive) languages
  • Turing machines, corresponding to Type 0 formal languges
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Thursday, December 13, 2012

Are you ready? ... Are you ready? ... Are you ...

A control system that performs a small number of tasks can be written without concurrent tasks or a full dispatcher, by polling the events from a loop.  There are rules that the polling loop must follow:
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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Memories of the past

Most modern computers use semiconductor memory (static or dynamic RAM) for storage of programs and data for the central processing unit (CPU), with magnetic disk or flash storage for programs and data that are not currently in use, and flash storage or optical disks (CDs or DVDs) for removable storage.  Several types of storage have previously been used, but are no longer adequate as storage media.
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Tuesday, December 11, 2012

How to do several things at once

Concurrent tasks are tasks that are in progress (but not necessarily running) at the same time.  Concurrency requires an operating system that saves the state of the processor for each concurrent task.
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Monday, December 10, 2012

Ada Lovelace, the first programmer

Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (December 10, 1815 - November 27, 1852), was the daughter of Lord Byron. She was taught mathematics (unusual at that time for women) by Augustus De Morgan.

Ada met and corresponded with Charles Babbage and in 1843 translated (from French) a description of one of Babbage's lectures on Babbage's Analytical Engine by Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea.  In a note she described an algorithm to be used on the machine to compute Bernoulli numbers.  This is the first computer program (an algorithm designed specifically to run on a computer).
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