week 2 readings

I thought that I was fairly knowledgeable when it came to the various aspects of computers, but after reading the Wikipedia article on computer hardware I realized how little I really know. I did not know what a motherboard was or other items mentioned. The article was a good in depth look at computer hardware and covered a lot. Parts of it where confusing to me especially in a section on internal buses. They used many acronyms in that section such as PCI, AGB, and VLB that I did not understand.

The computer history museum website was interesting to me. It was interesting to see the history of the internet. I had no clue that predecessor of the internet started so early in the 1960's. I wasn't even aware that technology that advanced was being invented that early. I thought the arpanet wasn't being tested till the late 70's into the 80's, but I was wrong. The history of semiconductors was also interesting. This was also new to me so enjoyed learning something new.

The Moore's Law Article

This article throughly confused me. I had to read it more that once to fully understand it and also had to look at other sites as well as look up some of the words to completely grasp the concept. I had to look up the words transistor and semiconductor to understand what they meant so I could proceed in writing this. I did not read all of the blogs yet, but one or two that I did seem to agree with me on some ideas I had when reading this. One thing I noticed was the second sentence. "The number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling approximately every two years." I am wondering how big this integrated circuit is that it can keep getting these transistors placed on it? Will there ever be a point when it cannot hold any more transistors and thus Moore's law will be no more? The article seemed unclear on that as it seemed to make a case for both sides of the issue which left me wondering. I also found interesting the section on the futurists. In this section a man name Kurzweil commented on how some new type of technology will replace current integrated circuit technology. One can only image what that would be and it leaves me anxious to await all the new technological advances to be made in the future.