Application and development
2 1 century is the century when mankind moves towards the information society, the era of networking, and the era when the construction of ultra-high-speed information expressway has made substantial progress and entered the application. So what new changes will take place in the development of information technology at the turn of the century? This article will answer this question from the following eleven aspects.
1, chip technology
Since the advent of 197 1 microprocessor, computers have experienced four-bit computers, eight-bit computers and 16-bit computers. In the early 1990s, a 32-bit microprocessor computing system appeared, which will enter the era of 64-bit computing. Intel 199 1 year, the 64-bit computer R4000 of MIPS company came out, and there were Alpha 2 1064, 2 1066, 2 165438 and 21266 of DEC company successively.
2. Parallel processing technology
Parallel processing technology includes parallel structure, parallel algorithm, parallel operating system, parallel language and its compiling system. In addition, parallel processing methods also include multiprocessor architecture, large-scale parallel processing system and workstation group (including workstation cluster system and network workstation).
At present, MP refers to a system with less than 100 CPU, and MPP refers to a system with 100 CPU.
3. Distributed client/server mode
The early centralized host mode was gradually replaced by client/server mode, and now it has developed into a three-tier mode based on Internet and Web technology. In this mode, the development trend of server network communication and application platform is also the focus of attention. The development trend of server technology is the transition from 32-bit computer to 64-bit computer. DEC has taken the lead in realizing this transformation. It is estimated that major hardware manufacturers will also complete this transition in 1998- 1999, such as HP, IBM and SGI. The overall structure mode of the server will develop from the current UMA, NUMA and MPP modes to the Crossbar Switches mode, which uses high-speed switching equipment to connect multiple CPU, memory and I/O modules, thus greatly improving the communication bandwidth and interconnection capacity of CPU, memory and I/O and the processing capacity of the server, and its configuration will pay more attention to flexibility, expansibility and reliability, thus becoming the next generation of high-performance servers.
Storage devices will also develop into networks, which are connected to their storage switching devices through high-speed fiber channels. Storage devices will be managed centrally; The dynamic allocation and configuration of storage devices make the storage capacity required by application software very flexible; Network storage devices can realize where the network is connected and where the storage devices are distributed.
4.64-bit operating system
At present, there are Digital Unix 4.0 of DEC, Open VMS 7.0 of SGI (1996) and Cluter IRIX 6.2. From 1998 to 2000, there will be Windows NT(64-bit) version 5.0, and SUN's Solaris will support Intel's Merced 64-bit chip, so 64-bit Solaris will become the mainstream of 64-bit Unix. In addition, SCO also announced its support for 64-bit operating systems.
200 1-2005 64-bit computing system will be mature. The 64-bit Unix systems of DEC and SGI are the most perfect, including the hardware platform, operating system and application development tools for 64-bit computing. DEC's 64-bit technology is in an obvious leading position, including not only 64-bit chips, operating systems and development tools, but also more than 8,000 kinds of application software transplanted from 32-bit to 64-bit. DEC's Alpha servers 8400, 4 100 and 2 100 have quite a lot of users. The next 5- 10 years will still be the integration of vertical technology market, which is easy to realize the requirement of seamless connection of all file systems in the network era. Supporting Unix/Windows NT integrated software environment is the general trend of future technology market development.
5. Gigabit network
Gigabit Ethernet is attractive mainly because it can get higher bandwidth without affecting the existing network. Gigabit Ethernet uses the same variable length frame format as Ethernet and Fast Ethernet. Gigabit Ethernet can be used without making other changes to the network. Gigabit Ethernet is installed in old Ethernet users, so the total cost is low. Gigabit Ethernet can be divided into switching, routing and * * * sharing solutions. All network technologies including IP switching technology and layer switching technology are fully compatible with Gigabit Ethernet.
6, network computing
Enterprise management, especially after the development stages of inventory management, material requirements planning (MRP) and manufacturing resource planning (MRP-II), has now developed into enterprise resource planning (ERP). The demand of an enterprise in production planning, material demand, cost accounting, marketing management and market strategy constitutes enterprise calculation.
With the advent of the 2 1 century, major hardware companies all over the world have put forward their own views on the future, such as IBM's network-centric computing, SCO's internet computing, Oracle's network computing, Sybase's distributed computing, Intel's MMX computing, Microsoft's NT computing, DEC's Web computing, HP's scalable high-quality server, Sun's Java computing and so on. Sun Zao put forward the slogan "Network is computer". In short, judging from the development trend of IT in the world, the era of network computing has arrived.
7, the development of enterprise network technology
Since the early 1980s, enterprise LANs have experienced two main stages of development, namely, shared backbone networks (such as single LAN, bridging LAN and routing LAN) and switching backbone networks (such as Ethernet, fast Ethernet, FDDI switching network and ATM switching network). The general development trend is from * * * shared backbone network to exchange backbone network. At present, the enterprise network mainly faces the following problems:
The scale of the network is growing, the number of enterprise users is increasing, the amount of information is increasing, the processing methods are becoming more and more complicated, and the requirements for response time and operation accuracy are getting higher and higher. The network structure, communication media and methods are becoming more and more complex, including wide-area communication, mobile communication, local communication, dial-up low-speed communication media and high-speed optical fiber media.
The application of Internet/Intranet increases the demand for network bandwidth, especially multimedia communication.
There are more and more online applications, which put forward higher and higher requirements for network bandwidth, speed, reliability and flexibility. Virtual network has a series of advantages, such as allowing the establishment of a logical network independent of physical location, network configuration through software, simplifying network management, optimizing bandwidth utilization and so on, which represents the development direction of future network technology.
8. Development of application platform
The application mode of information system in 2 1 century is bound to take an open road. IEEE defines an open system as a neutral application environment based on open standards. Unix and Windows NT are open operating systems, and Internet is the largest open application environment. The development of Internet makes people see a new application mode of NII and National Information Network in the future, that is, Internet/Intranet/Extranet mode. The basic idea of this model is:
The whole network uses the high-speed and open TCP/IP protocol of the Internet to communicate.
Use firewall or tunnel technology to group the intranet of the cost unit, and establish the necessary security and confidentiality mechanism.
Use the Web as a unified software development and application platform.
Using the Web as a platform for software development and application has the following advantages:
With strong system independence, users can use computers with HTML browsers, whether they are running Unix or Windows NT.
System administrators do not need to install software for specific users, and the system can be upgraded as a whole.
System designers can assume that all front-end application servers are Web servers.
Strong position independence, no matter where it is installed or what computer it is installed on.
There is no special requirement for the bandwidth of the connection, and it can be accessed very quickly, or it can be low-speed communication with very narrow bandwidth.
It is easy to retrieve data, and you can use an appropriate indexing engine to find Web materials effectively.
It has high reliability and protects the confidentiality and integrity of all data and transactions.
Web is the largest multiprocessor distributed system in the world. It uses redundant technology (system cluster, dual-network channel, RAID disk array) to ensure the reliability and integrity of the system.
In a word, Web platform combines openness and universality, provides application platform, running environment and man-machine interface, realizes the extensive enjoyment of software and information, and is bound to cause a revolution in the information industry.
9. Chinese information processing technology based on Internet.
Chinese information processing platform.
The key technologies of Chinese information processing include the input of Chinese demand information, automatic generation of Chinese text, semantic understanding, fast retrieval, two-way translation, Internet multimedia Chinese information processing, and context similarity research based on WWW.
Construction of modern Chinese corpus based on Internet.
Visualization, audibility and operability of Chinese interface.
Chinese classification, cross-reference index and content summary of Internet URLs.
10, Java technology
Java chip development, such as chip design and production, embedded household appliances, new computer system based on Java technology, network computer system, network TV or Internet TV set-top box (TSB), etc.
Enterprise integrated information processing system, such as enterprise Java computing, Java application in financial industry, e-trade, e-commerce, etc.
The application of Java in Internet and Intranet, such as website information consulting service, WWW resource integration, electronic advertisement, distance education, telemedicine, etc.
Using Java is the general trend.
1 1, multimedia technology
Multimedia technology enables computers to comprehensively process sound, text, images and video information. Its rich sound, text and image information, convenient interaction and real-time performance have greatly improved the man-machine interface and the use of computers, and opened the door for computers to enter all fields of human life. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop China's multimedia technology and multimedia industry as soon as possible.
Multimedia technology is the interface technology of information engineering in China and the key technology of computer industry in China. Multimedia technology is the best way to solve the problems of HDTV, digital conventional TV, interactive TV, video on demand, multimedia e-mail, distance education, telemedicine, home office, home shopping, and integration of three technologies. In addition, it is an advanced technology to transform traditional industries, especially publishing and printing, film and television, advertising, entertainment and other industries.
The main projects of multimedia software development technology are:
Multimedia database development technology;
Multimedia communication development technology;
Development technology of multimedia writing tools;
Using multimedia application software to develop multimedia electronic publication technology.
Selected from computer world network
(2) Lecture 13 Introduction to the Frontier of Computer Science
Two. Trends, Difficulties and Problems in the Future Development of Computer Science
Reporter: Computer science has been closely related to other disciplines since its birth. It effectively promotes the development of other disciplines, but also makes itself grow rapidly. In your opinion, what is the development trend of computer science in the future, and will it be more and more closely related to other disciplines?
Academician Li Guojie: When I look at the development trend of computer science, I usually divide it into three aspects. One dimension is the "high" direction. The performance is getting higher and higher, and the speed is getting faster and faster, mainly because the main frequency of computers is getting higher and higher. Like the 286,386 we used a few years ago, the main frequency is only tens of megabytes. In the early 1990s, the integration level of integrated circuits has reached more than 1 10,000, and it has entered the ULSI period since VLSI. Moreover, due to the maturity and popularization of RISC technology, the annual growth rate of CPU performance has increased from 35% in the 1980s to 60% in the 1990s. Later, Pentium series appeared, and now Pentium 4 microprocessor appears, with the main frequency reaching more than 2GHz. Moreover, the development of computers to a higher level is not only the improvement of chip frequency, but also the improvement of the overall performance of computers. A computer may use hundreds or thousands of processors instead of just one processor, which is called parallel processing. In other words, there are two ways to improve the performance of the computer: one is to improve the speed of the equipment, and the other is parallel processing. As mentioned above, by inventing new devices (such as quantum devices) and adopting nanotechnology, system-on-chip and other technologies, the device speed can be increased by several orders of magnitude. The innovation and progress of architecture marked by large-scale parallel behavior is another important way to improve the performance of computer systems. At present, the world's highest-performance general-purpose computers have adopted tens of thousands of computers in parallel, and ASCI of the United States plans to complete 12 per second. 3 trillion parallel machines. At present, 30 trillion parallel computers and 100 trillion parallel computers are being developed. Another plan goal of the United States is to launch Petaflops computers at around 20 10, whose processors will use superconducting quantum devices, each processor will run 1000 billion times per second, and * * * will run in parallel with 1000 billion processors. The parallelism of special computer is higher than that of general computer. IBM is developing a special computer for calculating protein folding structure, called Blue Gene Computer. A chip includes 32 processors, and the peak speed reaches 1 trillion times per second. It is planned to be realized in 2004. Connecting tens of thousands of computers to form a parallel machine is by no means an easy task, just like organizing thousands of workers to produce a product. The key technology of parallel computer is how to efficiently connect a large number of computers, that is, high-speed communication between processors, and how to effectively manage the coordination of thousands of computers. This is the function of operating system, the system software of parallel computer. How to deal with the contradiction between high performance and universality and the portability of application software is also a technical choice that must be faced in the development of parallel computers, and it is also an important topic in the development of computer science.
The other direction is to develop in a "wide" direction. The trend of computer development is so ubiquitous that it is like "no computer". In recent years, the obvious trend is networking, infiltrating into various fields, that is, developing and developing in breadth. Abroad, this trend is called pervasive computing or pervasive computing. For example, how many motors are there in your home? No one can tell. It is found in washing machines, refrigerators and tape recorders, almost everywhere. None of us can count. In the future, computers will exist in all kinds of electrical appliances at home, just like motors now. At that time, I asked you how many computers you had at home, but you couldn't count them. Your notebook and books have been digitized. Including textbooks for primary and secondary schools in the future, after ten or twenty years, students may no longer use textbooks in class, but just a notebook-sized computer, in which all curriculum textbooks, tutorials and exercises for primary and secondary schools are located. Different students can easily find the information they want according to their own needs. Moreover, these computers are integrated with the current mobile phones, and they can surf the Internet and exchange information with each other anytime and anywhere. Therefore, some people predict that computers may be as cheap as paper and can be used once, and computers will become the most commonly used and unnoticed daily necessities.
The third direction is to develop in the "depth" direction, that is, to develop intelligent information. There is a lot of information on the Internet. How to turn these vast things into the knowledge you want is an important topic in computing science, and the man-machine interface is more friendly. In the future, you can use your natural language to deal with computers, you can also use handwritten words to deal with computers, and you can even use your expressions and gestures to communicate with computers, making computer communication more convenient and fast. Since its birth, electronic computers have been devoted to simulating human thinking, hoping that computers will become more and more intelligent, not only to do some complicated things, but also to do things that require "wisdom", such as reasoning, learning, association and so on. Since 1956 put forward "artificial intelligence", the pace of computers in the direction of intelligence is not satisfactory. Scientists have failed to achieve the expected goal of artificial intelligence many times, which shows that it is a very arduous task to explore the essence of human intelligence. At present, the way of computer "thinking" is very different from that of human beings, and the interval between man and machine is not small. It is still difficult for human beings to deal with computers in natural ways, such as language, gestures and expressions. The difficulty in using computers has become a huge obstacle to the further popularization of computers. With the popularity of the Internet, the demand for ordinary people to use computers is increasing day by day, which will greatly promote the research of computer intelligence. In recent years, the technology of computer recognition of characters (including printed and handwritten) and spoken language has been greatly improved and has reached the level of commercialization. It is predicted that in 5- 10 years, handwriting and oral input will gradually become the mainstream input methods. Gestures (especially sign language gestures) and facial expression recognition have also made great progress. Virtual reality technology makes people immersed in the computer world, which has developed rapidly in recent years and will develop even faster in 2 1 century.
Figure 1 nano-DNA computer
Fig. 2 New progress has been made in the application research of nanoelectronics in China.
Figure 3 produced by Intel Corporation.
Pentium fourth generation CPU
Figure 4 Duron series CPU produced by AMD.
Figure 5 Series CPU produced by VIA Company
Speaking of the relationship between computer science and other disciplines, I think several disciplines are closely related to the development of computer science. From a technical point of view, communication technology and computer science are inseparable. In fact, many devices in communication technology are special computers. In addition, computers are indispensable in various industrial manufacturing. For example, in the future, a large number of parts in cars and airplanes will be made up of computers. The main cost of the future car may not be the body, wheels and engine, but the microprocessor chip and software inside. From a scientific point of view, I think the relationship between computer science and biology will be closer and closer. The general law of scientific development is that new technologies will appear every forty or fifty years to promote the development of other disciplines. The last two or three decades are a wave of science and technology marked by microelectronics and information technology. This period is expected to basically end by 2020. The next wave of science and technology will be a scientific leap marked by biotechnology. The interdisciplinary subject of biology and computer science, represented by bioinformatics, is booming. For example, using the theory and method of informatics to study life science, there may be many people who study computers to engage in bioinformatics research in the future, which is a hot spot in future research.
On the other hand, other disciplines will in turn promote the development of computer science. At present, almost all computers use semiconductor integrated circuits, but now people are also trying to study computers based on other materials, such as superconducting computers, optical computers, biological computers and so on. For example, we often hear about biochip technology. However, the current biochip is only used for detection and cannot be used for calculation. Although these technologies are still immature, there is a big gap with the practical application, but it can be expected that the development of these technologies will definitely make the future of computer science better.
Reporter: The emergence of the Internet has greatly changed our lives and brought computer technology into thousands of households. Its development prospect is very bright. But we know that unexpected difficulties are often encountered in scientific research. What do you think is the main difficulty in the development of computer science at present?
Academician Li Guojie: At present, there are three main problems in computer science. The first is the issue of complexity. The essence of computer science is dynamic complexity. There are hundreds of millions or even billions of transistors in a chip, as many as neurons in the brain. How to ensure that such a complex system can work normally without errors is not only a problem that can be solved by general measurement. Another problem is power consumption. The current power consumption does not seem to be a problem or an important issue, but it will become very important in more than ten years. According to Moore's Law, the performance of a chip will double every one and a half years, but doubling the performance may lead to doubling the power consumption. The greater the power consumption, the more heat is released. Now a chip may emit one or two hundred watts of heat, and a fan can also be used to dissipate heat, but if it is doubled by several hundred watts, it is equivalent to an electric furnace. It is very difficult to dissipate heat at this time. Therefore, how to improve performance without increasing or even reducing power consumption is a major topic in the development of computer science. The problem of power consumption is extremely complicated. Due to the miniaturization of integrated circuits, the future technology will reach below 0. 1 micron, and each chip has only a few atoms. At this time, the heat per unit area is already extremely high. So in the early days of the development of computer science, a famous scientist said that computer science is the science of refrigeration. The last question is about intelligence. There is a lot of information on the internet now. How to make the computer turn this information into the knowledge you need? This is a very difficult thing. This doesn't mean that I simply click on a website and it can search for the content that matches the characters I entered, but that the computer should systematize the collected knowledge. For example, if you want to find someone, you ask the computer, "Who is bin Laden?" Future computers have this ability. It can find the content related to who bin Laden is in thousands of web pages in Qian Qian, and organize an article to tell you the answer. For another example, if you want to know what nanotechnology is, you can ask the computer what nanotechnology is, and the computer will help you search the web page and find the answer you need.
Reference website:
/course/a 10 18/ Ke Cheng/Li Guojie/xinxi _ li _ 2.htm.