Article Abstract:
A wide variety of third-party add-in boards and subsystems are available to enhance workstation performance and functionality. These include hardware accelerators and coprocessors; network, interface and graphics adapter boards; magnetic disk, tape and optical storage and backup systems; data input devices such as mice, digitizer tablets and track balls; and output systems such as monitors, plotters, graphics printers and scan converters. More such products are available for IBM PC and compatible microcomputers than for any other architecture, but third-party vendors are expanding the hardware options for other workstation environments. The requirements for, usefulness of and applications of the various types of add-on products are briefly discussed.
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Article Abstract:
A new generation of larger and more powerful particle accelerators, some of which will be fifty kilometers in diameter, will accelerate particles to high energies and cause them to collide. These collisions may help physicists to delve deeper into the elementary structure of matter. Four of these machines are now operating or are under construction, while a twenty TeV accelerator has been proposed to the United States Department of Energy. Accelerators have been getting bigger for the past fifty years, thanks in part, to heavy politicking. A table lists world-wide accelerator facilities.
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Article Abstract:
Design automation stimulates technological evolution in computing and communication by providing more powerful computers which will in turn research yet more capable algorithms. Parallel processing, in which several networked computers divide a design automation task for simultaneous computation, is one trend in automated design. Another is the use of computer-aided design engines, hardware designed for particular problems. Automated design systems will continue to expand capabilities.
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