ITE 221-Morello Chapter 9 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet

In doing the homework, I did some “quick research” when it came to the proposed standards for 40 and 100 Gbps Ethernet.  I found that the latest standard was adopted June 17, 2010 by the IEEE 802.3 working group.  In 2006 the IEEE 802.3 working group formed the Higher Speed Study Group (HSSG) to determine the need for speeds higher than 10 Gigabit Ethernet.  The HSSG determined that high bandwidth content was rapidly outgrowing network capacities. The 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit standard is 802.3ba. The link is to the white papers as listed by brocade.com.  At the end of the white papers, there is mention of what is coming up next; the next generation of 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet.  This standard is to be known as 802.3bg.  The white papers close by saying that no one wants networks to be slower. They want to make 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet more economical and available.  You can view the full white papers at http://www.brocade.com/downloads/documents/white_papers/40_100_GbE_Are_Here_WP.pdf

Chapter 8 Morello Phase Shift Keying

For a long time, I totally did not understand Phase Shift Keying. So I decided to read more about it!  The most helpful site that I found was actually from the Physics department of University of Delaware.  It was a slide from A Brief Introduction to Modem Technology, and it’s by Those Guys. Yes- that is what the credits actually say! The graphics on the slide helped me comprehend what is happening in Phase Shift Keying.  From my understanding of the slide, with Phase Shift Keying, you move from different points in the wave. It has to do with the timing in the wave as opposed to the amplitude or the frequency of the wave.  The whole presentation is there; unfortunately some of the links, such as Acknowledgements are dead.  But overall I found this presentation to be very informative, helpful, and relevant.  You can find the presentation at http://www.physics.udel.edu/~watson/scen103/projects/96s/thosguys/index.html

ITE 221 Chapter 7 ScanTron

The site that I found was a tongue in cheek history of ScanTron. ScanTrons use OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) to grade tests, fill out healthcare forms, and any other application you can think of.  OMR uses the mark from the number two pencil to block the light coming through the sheet. OMR started becoming really popular in schools for testing in the 1930s. An interesting observation in the article is that punch tape; from the mid 19^th century is an early form of OMR. The site even answers the question, do you really need to use a number two pencil on a ScanTron- complete with graph of the darkness of different pencils! Check out the hilarious XKCD comic on the bottom of the page, too! I found the comic separately first, and was going to submit the link, but then I saw it was included in the article. You can find the site at http://io9.com/5908833/the-birth-of-scantrons-the-bane-of-standardized-testing

ITE 221 Chapter 6 PCIe standards

I decided to look into the different PCI versions. In my searching, I found that the newest version is PCIe 3.0.  Originally, I found the PCI-SIG website and was going to report on that. Unfortunately, all the documents are in a members-only status, and it costs $3000 a year to join.  I didn’t want to pay that and I’m guessing that you don’t want to pay that either.  Instead, I found a vendor website that talks about the differences between PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 2.0.   All the PCIe standards are backward compatible. The changes allow for faster data throughput to the system host board. The website includes the specs for the base clock rate, the Data Rate, the total bandwidth, and the data transfer rate. One interesting note is that PCIe 3.0 uses the same interface speed as PCIe 2.0, but has twice the communication speed of PCIe 2.0 due to various architectural and protocol management improvements.  You can view the website at http://www.trentontechnology.com/support-center/technical-information/resources/163-trenton-technology-pci-express-3-pcie-2

ITE 221 Chapter 5 Atomic Hard Drive

In Yahoo’s technology blog, on January 13, 2012, there was a video and article about IBM storing 1 bit of data on what amounts to a 12 atom hard drive. In accordance with Moore’s Law, things are getting smaller! Current hard drives use about a million atoms to store one bit of data. Using a scanning tunneling microscope, the same data was placed on the 12 atom hard drive. The atoms are manipulated and magnetized, and then can be used to store data. According to the video, IBM builds the structure one atom at a time.  They work with the existing magnetic properties in the atoms.

 This won’t be on shelves for about five to ten years, however, due to the fact that it can only operate at extremely low temperatures because of all the thermal energy used; it operates at 5 degrees Kelvin or 451 degrees Fahrenheit.  You can find the video and article at http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/ibm-creates-amazing-atomic-level-hard-drive-223951544.html

ITE 221-Chapter 4 Morello Logic Gates

One of the more advanced and interesting concepts I found in this chapter was logic gates.  AND, OR, XOR, and NOT, are only a few of the basic building blocks for CPU logic.  I was very intrigued by the whole idea, so that is what I decided to write about. The data transformations that occur with these gates can be confusing if you don’t understand them, so I found a site that explains with the use of animations. Unfortunately it only seems to work in Internet Explorer (Boo! Sorry Firefox users. I don’t know about Chrome or Opera- but it wouldn’t work in Firefox.) This site has truth tables that tell you what the output would be for which inputs and gates, and it even has a half adder, a full adder, and a Flip-Flop (Not the kind you wear on your feet!). You can find this website at http://isweb.redwoods.cc.ca.us/instruct/calderwoodd/diglogic/index.htm