A Midsummer's Nights Mare
Well, well.... Exams finally... what the hell... isn't there any other way of testing our knowledge. I think the CPU design experiment was much better. At least we were getting some positive results in the experiment. Here I seem to be studying aimlessly.
To top it all, our professor seems so well entrenched in the technology of the 1960s and 1970s, that we have been taught with examples from machines of the bygone era, viz. PDP-11, Intel 8085, Burroughs, DEC etc. And believe me it all is very frustrating to read about technology that is so obsolete, that Windows 3.1 seems cutting edge. Hah, we possibly know more about PDP-11 now than anybody else in the world, coz nobody else is interested. I had been pretty excited by this computer architecture course, because I like this and want to know more about this area of computing technology. Theory has never fascinated me, and I was enamored by the way the ingenius engineers came up with solutions to formidable problems. And the solutions seem so very simple, and seem to mirror our real world.
I will illustrate with an example. Earlier, when computers asked for some input from the keyboard, the CPU would wait till it got the necessary data. However, engineers realized that the CPU was much much faster than the typing speed of the user, and could do loads of work in the meantime. But the problem was that how would the CPU would know that a key has been pressed, as it was doing something else now. Very simple, the keyboard would inform the CPU, decided the engineers. And they invented a method called interrupt processing. The term seems pretty geekish but in effect is the the means to do exactly what I have described above.
I always like such feet-on-the-ground-imagination-flying-away thinking and would like to do something that gives me a chance think like this. One think I have noticed that the toughest problems in the technology world have very simple, straightforward solutions taken directly from basic human philosophy. And the greatest inventors are those who are able to put themselves in the shoes of the machines and think of a practical and easy way to do things.
And thankfully, it does not involve thinking like theoretical computer sciencists, they try to look for ways and means to prove that a problem has no practical solution. On the other hand, engineers look for practical solutions, and if they cannot find any, they look for good approximations to those solutions or even possibly look at the problem from a different angle and try to find a feasible approximation of the solution.
Yes, as I was saying, I am always fascinated by the way computer technology has been developed and the way it is changing the world around us. And I am intersted in these engineering aspects. The courses we do in our college give us no inkling about how such practical problems are solved and never, never talk about emerging technologies, try to kindle the interests of the students. That is perhaps why so many of us opt for non-technical careers, after being hailed as the best technical brains in the country.
Well, well, it's been a long blog now and I will refill and delve back to the great mysteries of PDP-11 and Intel 8085 and make some sense of the great work our forefathers [of the computing community] have done.
So long,
===
The World Reads in awe as I write !!!
To top it all, our professor seems so well entrenched in the technology of the 1960s and 1970s, that we have been taught with examples from machines of the bygone era, viz. PDP-11, Intel 8085, Burroughs, DEC etc. And believe me it all is very frustrating to read about technology that is so obsolete, that Windows 3.1 seems cutting edge. Hah, we possibly know more about PDP-11 now than anybody else in the world, coz nobody else is interested. I had been pretty excited by this computer architecture course, because I like this and want to know more about this area of computing technology. Theory has never fascinated me, and I was enamored by the way the ingenius engineers came up with solutions to formidable problems. And the solutions seem so very simple, and seem to mirror our real world.
I will illustrate with an example. Earlier, when computers asked for some input from the keyboard, the CPU would wait till it got the necessary data. However, engineers realized that the CPU was much much faster than the typing speed of the user, and could do loads of work in the meantime. But the problem was that how would the CPU would know that a key has been pressed, as it was doing something else now. Very simple, the keyboard would inform the CPU, decided the engineers. And they invented a method called interrupt processing. The term seems pretty geekish but in effect is the the means to do exactly what I have described above.
I always like such feet-on-the-ground-imagination-flying-away thinking and would like to do something that gives me a chance think like this. One think I have noticed that the toughest problems in the technology world have very simple, straightforward solutions taken directly from basic human philosophy. And the greatest inventors are those who are able to put themselves in the shoes of the machines and think of a practical and easy way to do things.
And thankfully, it does not involve thinking like theoretical computer sciencists, they try to look for ways and means to prove that a problem has no practical solution. On the other hand, engineers look for practical solutions, and if they cannot find any, they look for good approximations to those solutions or even possibly look at the problem from a different angle and try to find a feasible approximation of the solution.
Yes, as I was saying, I am always fascinated by the way computer technology has been developed and the way it is changing the world around us. And I am intersted in these engineering aspects. The courses we do in our college give us no inkling about how such practical problems are solved and never, never talk about emerging technologies, try to kindle the interests of the students. That is perhaps why so many of us opt for non-technical careers, after being hailed as the best technical brains in the country.
Well, well, it's been a long blog now and I will refill and delve back to the great mysteries of PDP-11 and Intel 8085 and make some sense of the great work our forefathers [of the computing community] have done.
So long,
===
The World Reads in awe as I write !!!
posted by kpowerinfinity @ 4:16 pm
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