lecture 9: personal computers - system hardware and software

2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 1

Lecture 9:

Personal Computers- System Hardware and Software

Raine Mäki, Reima SaarinenDept. of CSE, Helsinki University of Tech.

Sangjin HanDept. of EECS, Korea Advanced Institute of Sci. &

Tech.


Overview of the presentation

• System hardware A walkthrough of different multimedia

related devices in PCs

• System software Operating systems Multimedia APIs GUI toolkits

• Extra Case Study: PC vs. PlayStation2


System hardware

• System architectures• Processors (CPUs)• Main memory• Mass storage devices• Display devices• Graphics cards (GPUs)• Sound related devices• Other multimedia devices


System architectures

• Basic CPU/memory/bus model is the most common system architecture

• Uni/multi processor systems• One/many memory locations• Network systems (not really

a PC anymore?)• Busses

PCI, AGP, PCI-E, IDE, SCSI..• Main boards connect other

components together and provide integrated functionalities


Processors (CPUs)

• Mostly 32 or 64 bit systems• Only two big CPU manufacturers

exist Intel (Celeron, Pentium, Xeon..) AMD (Sempron, Athlon,

Opteron..) Other CPUs (RISC, MIPS,

Transmeta..)• Clock frequencies

MHz, GHz, FSB, multipliers..• Multicore processors (virtually

many CPUs)• Multilevel cache memory

L1, L2..• Heat and power consumption is

huge problem!• Mobile CPUs


Main memory

• Main memory is usually RAM (Random Access Memory)

• Loses its data if not constantly refreshed

• Not as expensive as fast L1 and L2 level memories, but more expensive than magnetic mass storage memories

• Technologies DRAM, SIMM, DIMM, RIMM, DDR,

DDR2 , SO-DIMM, ECC..• Clock speeds (MHz)

e.g. 266, 333, 400, 500..• FSB and latencies make the true

speed• Memory sizes

Several MBs – a few GBs 128, 256, 512, 1024 (1GB)..


Mass storage devices

• Mainly magnetic and optical disks Hard drives / disks CDs, DVDs Floppy disks (almost gone)

• Other mass storage solutions USB (flash) memories,

CompactFlash cards etc.. Tape drives

• Capasities From megas to hundreds of

gigas• Speeds

Seek time Rotational latency (rpm) Bus speeds (MHz)

• Magnetic disks exist only because main memory is expensive


Display devices

• CRTs CRTs’ era is almost over

• Flat panels (LCD) Are now cheap enough Used to have latency issues Still have view angle issues

• Projectors (beamers) Expensive LCD and DLB technologies (Digital

Light Processing)• Main properties of the devices

Colors they can show• e.g. 24bit (= 16M colors)

Max resolution they support• e.g. 1600x1200


Graphics cards (GPUs)

• Graphics cards are like small computers themselves!

• They process the frames that are to be drawn on the display device

• Mainly two (chip) manufacturers dominate the market ATI (Radeon)

• Newest product family is the Radeon X1000-series

nVIDIA (GeForce)• E.g. the GeForce 7800-series

• Main card components Pixel and vertex shaders (processors) Memory (e.g. GDDR)

• AGP vs. PCI-E bus technologies• Heat, noise and power consumption are major

problems• Two cards can be used the same time with

GeForce SLI and ATI CrossFire technologies.


Sound related devices

• Sounds are processed by a sound module that can be an: Internal sound card

• E.g. Sound Blaster Audigy & X-Fi External sound peripheral

• The best sound modules are usually external

Integrated sound “card” on the main board

• E.g. AC’97• Sounds are produced by speakers

E.g. 2, 2.1, 5.1 or 7.1 channel speaker

• Sound quality comes from good hardware plus High encoding bitrates and sample

frequencies (e.g. 24bit, 48KHz..)


Other multimedia devices

• There are a lot of different other multimedia related peripheral out there e.g. TV-cards I/O devices

• mouse, keyboard, gamepad, joystick etc.

Networking hardware• Network, Bluetooth, USB, Firewire cards/modules

Webcams Microphones

• Is the next big thing the invention of a physics card that does the world modelling calculations?


System software

• Operating systems Windows, Linux, Mac OS

• Multimedia APIs Windows API, GDI, DirectX, DirectFB,

OpenGL, SDL

• GUI toolkits Windows, X Window, Java, examples


Operating systems

• Microsoft Windows Most current version is XP (2001) Next version is Vista

• Now in Beta1 stage• Should be released in the end of

next year (2006) Windows is by far the most popular

OS of today Easy to use and learn Supports almost all hardware there

is Because of popularity it has some

security conserns A massive system that requires

new hardware to work It sometimes causes BSoDs (Blue-

Screens-of-Death)


Operating systems (cont’d)

• Linux A lot of different distributions (distros)

available• Mandrake/Mandriva, Suse, Fedora, Debian,

Red Hat, Xandros, Slackware, Ubuntu, etc..• Most are freely downloadable from the

Internet• Some distros cost money

– By giving money you will get CDs, support services, user manuals etc.

A Unix type OS Source code is available Is stable and secure (at least some distros

are) A true multi-user environment Not all programs or games are available in

Linux Because of lack of device drivers, not all

hardware works with Linux.


Operating systems (cont’d)

• Mac OS X Current version of OS X is Tiger

(10.4) Previous one was Panther (10.3) Macs and OS Xs are known to be

used mainly by graphics artists and content producers

It’s easy to use and its usability is far better that other OSs.

Under the pretty outlook, it is still a Unix based OS

• Macs look nice and trendy• Some could argue that Macs are not

really PCs at all, because they are not that customizable


Multimedia APIs

• This part introduces a few Multimedia Application programming Interfaces (APIs)

• I'm going to consentrate on the Windows environment and especially on Windows API and DirectX I'll also show a few code examples

• I'm also going to tell shortly what are DirectFB, OpenGL (probably quite familiar already) and SDL

• I'm trying to be a little practical so I'm not going to tell about the history of these APIs in detail Everyone interested can search for more information

from the internet or by using the provided links in the end


Windows API

• Provides building blocks for applications that are written for Windows

• Designed for C/C++ programmers• Familiarity with the Windows graphical user

interface and message-driven architecture is required

• Examples that Win API can be used to: graphical user interfaces display graphics and formatted text (GDI) manage system objects such as memory, files, and

processes sounds and video (Windows Multimedia)


User Interface

• Windowing• Resources

Icons, cursors, menus...

• Common controls Buttons, text fields, edits, syslinks

(hypertext), scroll bars, list boxes...

• User input Keyboard, mouse...


Graphical Device Interface (GDI)

• Used in most Windows applications to generate graphical output for video displays and printers

• Can draw lines, curves, closed figures, paths, text, and bitmap images

• Color and style depends on selected or created drawing objects: pens, brushes and fonts

• GDI+ is improvement to GDI that optimizes existing features and adds for example gradient colors, alpha blending Included in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

(available to some earlier Windows’) Also improves the API


Windows Multimedia

• A basic Windows library• Enables applications for example to play

sounds and video and to record sounds• Used in PlaySound example


DirectX

• One of the most popular APIs in game development

• Only works in Windows (and Xbox)• Provides APIs enabling software developers

to access specialized hardware features without having to write hardware-specific code

• Enables higher performance in graphics and sound when you’re playing games or watching video

• Consists of many components that are meant for different kinds of tasks


DirectX 9.0 Main Components

• DirectX Graphics component combines the Direct3D component and the D3DX utility library, which simplifies many graphics programming tasks

• DirectInput component provides support for a variety of input devices, including full support for force-feedback technology

• DirectSound component can be used in the development of high-performance audio applications that play and capture waveform audio


Old DirectX Components

• DirectDraw handled all 2D drawing but it isn't available anymore and using it is no longer recommended In DirectX 9.0 all 2D functionality is contained

within Direct3D and its associated helper functions in D3DX

DirectDraw documentation is still available and can be viewed on MSDN

• DirectMusic will maintain its current status until new technology is made available DirectMusic documentation can be found at:

<SDK Root>/Documentation/DirectX9


Old DirectX Components (cont'd)

• DirectPlay is deprecated and Microsoft strongly recommends against using it to develop new applications Game developers should use Windows

Sockets and the Windows Firewall APIs

• DirectShow is no longer recommended for game development All of the DirectShow components were

removed from the DirectX 9.0 SDK Update April 2005, but are available in the latest Platform SDK Install


DirectX Example: Far Cry


DirectFB

• Thin library that provides: Hardware graphics acceleration Input device handling and abstraction Integrated windowing system and

multiple display layers on top of the Linux Framebuffer Device

• Supports GNU/Linux and FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD without accelation support

• Support for Mac OS X is currenly worked on


DirectFB Example: Quake 3: Arena


OpenGL

• Free environment for developing portable, interactive 2D and 3D graphics applications.

• Since its introduction in 1992, OpenGL has become the industry's most widely used and supported 2D and 3D graphics API, bringing thousands of applications to a wide variety of computer platforms

• Speeds application development by incorporating a broad set of rendering, texture mapping, special effects, and other powerful visualization functions

• Many OpenGL extensions, as well as extensions to related APIs like GLU, GLX, and WGL, have been defined by vendors and groups of vendors


OpenGL ES

• Royalty-free, cross-platform API for full-function 2D and 3D graphics on embedded systems Consoles Phones Appliances


OpenGL Example:Homeworld 2


Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)

• Cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL or DirectX and 2D video framebuffer

• Used e.g. for games, emulators, demos, multimedia applications

• Supports Linux, Windows, BeOS, MacOS Classic, MacOS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX Some unofficial support for Windows CE,

AmigaOS, Dreamcast, Atari, NetBSD, AIX, OSF/Tru64, RISC OS, and SymbianOS


SDL (cont'd)

• Written in C but works with C++ natively• Has bindings to several other languages,

including Ada, Eiffel, Java, Lua, ML, Perl, PHP, Pike, Python, and Ruby

• Currently available under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2 or newer.


Using SDL

• Initializing the library • Video

Choosing and setting video modes Drawing pixels on the screen and loading

and displaying images

• Events Waiting for events Polling for events and event states


Using SDL (cont'd)

• Audio Opening the audio device Loading and playing sounds CD-ROM audio

• Threads Create a simple thread Synchronizing access to a resource

• Timers Get the current time, in milliseconds Wait a specified number of milliseconds


SDL Example:NetHack Falcon Eye


GUI toolkits

• What is a GUI toolkit? (Widget toolkit) A set of basic building elements for

graphical user interfaces.

Widgets: GUI:


For Windows

• Windows API A basis of all GUI toolkits on Windows

• MFC (Win32)• Windows Forms (.NET)

• OWL VCL CLX Of Borland


For X Window System

• X doesn’t offer any common widgets. The reason why X applications look

different.

• Two major GUI toolkitsQT• Managed by Trolltech• Basis of KDE• C++

GTK+• GPL• Basis of GNOME• C (with an OOP

manner)• Originally for GIMP


For Java

• AWT In early versions of Java Direct mapping to

native widgets•Heavyweight

• Swing Since Java 2 Controls widgets by

itself•Lightweight•Low-performance

• SWT


Examples: How to make a GUI app?

• Simple “Hello World” Programs on Windows using Win32 api (Message-handling manner) QT (Event-handling manner) Windows Forms (IDE-integrated manner)


Hello World – (1) Win32 API

• Tens of lines should be coded even for a simple application.

• Message handling When clicked, a WM_COMMAND message

is passed.


Hello World – (2) QT

• mywidget.h, mywidget.cpp, main.cpp• Event handling

By connecting clicked() signal to onClick() slot

• Compilation From extended C++ code to usual C++


Hello World – (3) Windows Forms

• Using Visual Studio .Net,• IDE integrated GUI programming

Like other RAD tools such as Delphi, Borland C++ Builder, Visual Basic, etc.

• Must be run on Microsoft .Net Framework


PC vs. PlayStation2

• What makes PCs different from other multimedia-dedicated devices? Why PS2 games look nicer than PC games

even today?• A case study with PlayStation2

versus


PC vs. PlayStation2 (cont’d)

PC• Powerful CPU (x86)

1~3Ghz CISC 8 32bits GPRs

• 256MB ~ 1GB of RAM• Magnetic disks• A HW abstraction

layer is needed

PlayStation2• Poor CPU (EE)

200Mhz RISC (MIPS inst.) 32 128bits GPRs

• Many useful features for multimedia

• No compatability problem

• Hardware



PC• Various OS

Windows, Linux, etc.• Various MM APIs

DirectX, SDL, OpenGL, etc.

PlayStation2• No operating system

Runtime library only• No MM APIs

Must deal with HW directly

Some 3rd party libraries are available

• Software



PC• Plentiful programming

languages. Hundreds of!

• Various IDE and RAD tools

• So many references

PlayStation2• No option

ASM, C, C++• Notepad =)

CodeWarrior is available like other embedded systems.

• Seldom documents Confidential almost

• Development environment


References

• Windows API http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/

winprog/winprog/windows_api_start_page.asp• DirectX

Customers: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx

Developers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnanchor/html/anch_directx.asp

• DirectFB http://www.directfb.org/

• OpenGL http://www.opengl.org/

• OpenGL ES http://www.khronos.org/opengles/

• Simple DirectMedia Layer http://www.libsdl.org/


Kiitos!

lecture 9: personal computers - system hardware and software

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