Beyond Everyone's Imagination

Behind

Many have claimed to know me

But no one really do

Several have tried to read between the lines

Yet failed,turned their back,left.

Some have concluded

I am a winning piece without words

An influencial song without lyrics

A “pensieve” without thoughts.

I have been reticent with what I feel

Outside,we’re the same, inside we vary

Tantamount to others

Stranger within.

Screaming silently

Reluctant with the voices inside me

Benumbed by circumstances

Yet, inside, still bleeding.

Engulfed with nothingness

I have felt the thirst of wanting

Say,shout,express,love

Enough of these cover-ups.

The Existence of “von Neumann”

 Hello there!!  :D Uhmmp,. I’m not quite acquainted with this person. LOL And though Sir Bench had discussed him during class, I still don’t have any idea (up to this very moment.,akalain mo un!!) on who he is and on what he had contributed to the computer world.

All I know is that he published “something” that is not from his own effort. In short, Giharbat ra niya!tsk3,. looi,. aw

Anyways, let’s know him and together let us discover the person behind the name JOHN VON NEUMANN.

                                           JOHN VON NEUMANN

Let us first answer the question:  WHO IS JOHN VON NEUMANN??

John von Neumann’s Biography

The Hungarian-born American mathematician John Von Neumann (1903-1957) was the originator of the theory of games and an important contributor to computer technology.

John Von Neumann was born in Budapest on Dec. 28, 1903. He left Hungary in 1918 and studied at the University of Berlin and the Zurich Institute of Technology. After receiving his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Budapest in 1926, he attended the University of Göttingen for a year. Göttingen enjoyed a tremendous reputation in the mathematical sciences: the great master and inspirer of generations of students, David Hilbert, had not yet retired, the “ex-prodigy” Norbert Wiener was a visiting fellow from the United States, and the university was the meeting ground for many brilliant young scientific intellects. One of Von Neumann’s fellow students was the future atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Von Neumann taught mathematics at the University of Berlin (1927-1929) and the University of Hamburg (1929-1930). Then the young Hungarian, like so many others at that time, found refuge in the United States, obtaining a post at Princeton University, where he taught mathematical physics until 1933. He had been working on quantum mechanics for a number of years, and his book on that subject, published in 1932, provided a useful exposition of the mathematical logic of the theory.

However, Von Neumann had already developed a theory which was to be potentially of much greater value but which was not fully developed for nearly 20 years. In 1927 he propounded a mathematical technique for the analysis of conflict, but it was only in 1944 that he and Oskar Morgenstern wrote the celebrated Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, which had a profound influence on the development of strategy in widely differing fields of application. The theory of games is a concept which can be applied to the logic of conflict; it is an attempt to provide a quantitative basis for rational behavior in a situation which has conflict potential. This purely mathematical technique has developed as an important subject of study for its economic, social, political, and military applications.

In 1933 Von Neuman became professor of mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a position he held until his death. During World War II he played an important role in the field of applied mathematics devoted to military needs and worked on the motion of compressible fluids caused by explosions. He was a consultant at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (1943-1955), where his extraordinary intellectual  coupled with common sense were of considerable influence. Having seen the potential of high-speed machine calculation in these problems, he studied the mathematical logic of computers and their complex technology. The first computer at Princeton was built in 1952 under his guidance. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission placed him on its Central Advisory Committee in 1952 and made him a commissioner 2 years later. His interest in computer technology continued until his death on Feb. 8, 1957, in Washington, D.C.

So that’s the life of John!Quite fascinating…:D

And now that we know who John von Neumann is, let us go to the second question which is…

WHAT IS HIS CONTRIBUTION/S??

Von Neumann Architecture 

Von Neumann’s contributions have been so widespread and so enduring because of his attitude towards his innovations. The foundations of his work were laid in the “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,” written in the spring of 1945 and distributed to the staff of the Moore School of Engineering (engineering school of the University of Pennsylvania where the EDVAC was originally developed) in late June. It presented the first written description of the stored program concept and explained how a stored program computer process information. 

The report organized the computer system into four main parts: the Central Arithmetical unit (CA), the Central Control unit (CU), the Memory (M), and the Input/Output devices (IO). The CA was to carry out the four basic arithmetic operations and perhaps higher arithmetical functions such as roots, logarithms, trigonometric functions, and their inverses. The CU was to control the proper sequencing of operations and make the individual units act together to carry out the specific task programmed into the system. The M was to store both numerical data (initial boundary values, constant values, tables of fixed functions) and numerically coded instructions. And the IO unit(s) were to serve as the user’s interface into the computer. 

Von Neumann was interested in presenting a “logical” description of the stored program computer rather than an engineering description. He was concerned with the overall structure of a computing system, the abstract parts that comprise it, the functions of each part, and how the parts interact to process the information. The specific materials or design of the implementation of the parts was not pertinent to his analysis. Any technology that meets the functional specifications can be used with no effect on his results. For instance, a person could take the place of the CC, a piece of paper the M, a calculator the CA, the keys and display of the calculator the I/O, resulting in a complete ‘computer.’ 

Von Neumann’s contributions to computer design were so wide spread not only because of his brilliance but also because of his attitudes. He was less concerned with patents and patent law then he was with spreading information about his innovations. Starting with his “First Draft” and continuing throughout his work in computers, von Neumann openly shared his thoughts and theories with anyone that was interested, including competitors. He openly and freely distributed his papers and gave talks on his latest ideas, changing the course of computers that were under development as his ideas evolved. Manufacturers went from building an EDVAC clone to building an EDSAC clone to building an IAS clone all on the basis of von Neumann’s ideas.

His contributions endure even today: his basic architectural design can easily be recognized in the most advanced of today’s computers.

Indeed, von Neumann’s contributions where greatly recognized up to today’s generation. 

So, hope this blog will hope you more than the way it helped me! :D 

‘til next time! :D

CCLCIV 

ComArch

computer architecture is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements and design implementations for the various parts of a computer, focusing largely on the way by which the central processing unit (CPU) performs internally and accesses addresses in memory. It may also be defined as the science and art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals. Computer architecture comprises at least three main subcategories