12. Age of Thinking Machines. 1261

The electronic computer is one of the most remarkable achievements of the 20th century. This smart multipurposed devise has changed our world beyond recognition.

The following trends in the development of electronic computation may be defined according to Soviet Academician Viktor Glushkov:

• An increase in the volume of the machine me­mory. The memory system of the future machines will store the entire wealth of knowledge accumulated by man in all the sciences, in culture and in every aspect of human life, the potential in this field being infinite.

• microminiaturization, associated with the progress of radio electronics. In the designing of electro­nic computers we have passed from radio valves to transis­tors, which are smaller in size, and recently to solid circuits, where various portions of a tiny piece of synthetic crystal are imparted the necessary electro-physical properties by appropriate treatments.

Microminiaturization makes it possible to construct extremely complex computers of small size and weight, but consisting of a tremendous number of elements.

Electronic machines will affect radically the work of scientists. Thanks to the high rate of processing the machine will indepen­dently, by itself accumu­late, process and supply new data.

13. Differences Between Mainframes and Supercomputers. 1248

A supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers are used for scientific and engineering problems (Grand Challenge problems) which are limited by processing speed and memory size.

Supercomputers are measured in floating point operations per second (FLOPS). Floating point operations are mostly addition, subtraction, and multiplication with enough digits of precision to model continuous phenomena such as weather. Due to computational ability supercomputers are more powerful.

IBM (International Business Machine) mainframes dominate the mainframe market at well over 90% market share.

Mainframes are used for problems which are limited by data movement in input/output devices. They are reliable for handling multiple business transactions concurrently.

Mainframes are measured in millions of instructions per second (MIPS) while assuming typical instructions are integer operations. Mainframes are built to be reliable for transaction processing in the business world: a commercial exchange of goods, services, or money.

Mainframes are typically used in applications where downtime is costly or catastrophic.

14.What Are Newsgroups? Part 1 1246

Say you have an overwhelming passion for rose gardening. How do you find other rose gardeners to swap tips with and brag to? Easy: join a newsgroup.

Newsgroups are publically posted discussion forums--kind of an electronic clubhouse for people with shared interests. The messages are presented in a list, known as a thread, that shows the original message, the responses to the message, and the responses to the responses, so that you can follow an entire conversation or just the parts you're interested in.

Your browser alone won't let you get to newsgroups. You can read and post messages using either standalone newsreader software, such as Forte's Free Agent, or a newsreader that's a separate part of a Web browser package, such as Netscape's Collabra or Microsoft's Outlook Express.

The Usenet is the world's largest collection of public newsgroups. The newsgroups go by a complex set of abbreviated names, with the first set of letters of a newsgroup's name indicating its primary subject, such as rec (recreation), soc (society), or comp (computers). Additional abbreviations are separated by periods and are tacked on to indicate subtopics. It's not uncommon for an individual newsgroup to have five, six, or more elements in its name.