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1,301 | Software is a collection of programs and data that tell a computer how to perform specific tasks. Software often includes associated software documentation. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. |
1,302 | At the lowest programming level, executable code consists of machine language instructions supported by an individual processor—typically a central processing unit or a graphics processing unit . Machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the compute... |
1,303 | The majority of software is written in high-level programming languages. They are easier and more efficient for programmers because they are closer to natural languages than machine languages. High-level languages are translated into machine language using a compiler, an interpreter, or a combination of the two. Softwa... |
1,304 | An algorithm for what would have been the first piece of software was written by Ada Lovelace in the 19th century, for the planned Analytical Engine. She created proofs to show how the engine would calculate Bernoulli numbers. Because of the proofs and the algorithm, she is considered the first computer programmer. |
1,305 | The first theory about software, prior to the creation of computers as we know them today, was proposed by Alan Turing in his 1936 essay, On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This eventually led to the creation of the academic fields of computer science and software engineering; both... |
1,306 | In 2000, Fred Shapiro, a librarian at the Yale Law School, published a letter revealing that John Wilder Tukey's 1958 paper "The Teaching of Concrete Mathematics" contained the earliest known usage of the term "software" found in a search of JSTOR's electronic archives, predating the Oxford English Dictionary's citatio... |
1,307 | On virtually all computer platforms, software can be grouped into a few broad categories. |
1,308 | Based on the goal, computer software can be divided into: |
1,309 | Programming tools are also software in the form of programs or applications that developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support software. |
1,310 | Software is written in one or more programming languages; there are many programming languages in existence, and each has at least one implementation, each of which consists of its own set of programming tools. These tools may be relatively self-contained programs such as compilers, debuggers, interpreters, linkers, an... |
1,311 | People who use modern general purpose computers usually see three layers of software performing a variety of tasks: platform, application, and user software. |
1,312 | Computer software has to be "loaded" into the computer's storage . Once the software has loaded, the computer is able to execute the software. This involves passing instructions from the application software, through the system software, to the hardware which ultimately receives the instruction as machine code. Each in... |
1,313 | Data movement is typically from one place in memory to another. Sometimes it involves moving data between memory and registers which enable high-speed data access in the CPU. Moving data, especially large amounts of it, can be costly; this is sometimes avoided by using "pointers" to data instead. Computations include s... |
1,314 | Software quality is very important, especially for commercial and system software. If software is faulty, it can delete a person's work, crash the computer and do other unexpected things. Faults and errors are called "bugs" which are often discovered during alpha and beta testing. Software is often also a victim to wha... |
1,315 | Many bugs are discovered and fixed through software testing. However, software testing rarely—if ever—eliminates every bug; some programmers say that "every program has at least one more bug" . In the waterfall method of software development, separate testing teams are typically employed, but in newer approaches, colle... |
1,316 | The software's license gives the user the right to use the software in the licensed environment, and in the case of free software licenses, also grants other rights such as the right to make copies. |
1,317 | Proprietary software can be divided into two types: |
1,318 | Open-source software comes with a free software license, granting the recipient the rights to modify and redistribute the software. |
1,319 | Software patents, like other types of patents, are theoretically supposed to give an inventor an exclusive, time-limited license for a detailed idea on how to implement a piece of software, or a component of a piece of software. Ideas for useful things that software could do, and user requirements, are not supposed to... |
1,320 | Software patents are controversial in the software industry with many people holding different views about them. One of the sources of controversy is that the aforementioned split between initial ideas and patent does not seem to be honored in practice by patent lawyers—for example the patent for aspect-oriented progra... |
1,321 | Design and implementation of software vary depending on the complexity of the software. For instance, the design and creation of Microsoft Word took much more time than designing and developing Microsoft Notepad because the former has much more basic functionality. |
1,322 | Software is usually developed in integrated development environments like Eclipse, IntelliJ and Microsoft Visual Studio that can simplify the process and compile the software. As noted in a different section, software is usually created on top of existing software and the application programming interface that the un... |
1,323 | Data structures such as hash tables, arrays, and binary trees, and algorithms such as quicksort, can be useful for creating software. |
1,324 | Computer software has special economic characteristics that make its design, creation, and distribution different from most other economic goods. |
1,325 | A person who creates software is called a programmer, software engineer or software developer, terms that all have a similar meaning. More informal terms for programmer also exist such as "coder" and "hacker" – although use of the latter word may cause confusion, because it is more often used to mean someone who illega... |
1,326 | A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a television or other display devices and controlled with a separate game contr... |
1,327 | Video game consoles are a specialized form of a home computer geared towards video game playing, designed with affordability and accessibility to the general public in mind, but lacking in raw computing power and customization. Simplicity is achieved in part through the use of game cartridges or other simplified method... |
1,328 | Video game consoles are usually sold on a 5–7 year cycle called a generation, with consoles made with similar technical capabilities or made around the same time period grouped into one generation. The industry has developed a razor and blades model: manufacturers often sell consoles at low prices, sometimes at a loss,... |
1,329 | The first video game consoles were produced in the early 1970s. Ralph H. Baer devised the concept of playing simple, spot-based games on a television screen in 1966, which later became the basis of the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. Inspired by the table tennis game on the Odyssey, Nolan Bushnell, Ted Dabney, and Allan Alco... |
1,330 | Handheld consoles emerged from technology improvements in handheld electronic games as these shifted from mechanical to electronic/digital logic, and away from light-emitting diode indicators to liquid-crystal displays that resembled video screens more closely. Early examples include the Microvision in 1979 and Game ... |
1,331 | Both home and handheld consoles have become more advanced following global changes in technology. These technological shifts include including improved electronic and computer chip manufacturing to increase computational power at lower costs and size, the introduction of 3D graphics and hardware-based graphic processor... |
1,332 | Following the same type of Moore's law progression, home consoles are grouped into generations; each lasting approximately five years. Consoles within each generation share similar specifications and features, such as processor word size. While no one grouping of consoles by generation is universally accepted, one brea... |
1,333 | Most consoles are considered programmable consoles and have the means for the player to switch between different games. Traditionally, this has been done by switching a physical game cartridge or game card or through using optical media. It is now common to download games through digital distribution and store them on ... |
1,334 | Dedicated consoles were very popular in the first generation until they were gradually replaced by second generation that use ROM cartridges. The fourth generation gradually merged to optical media. It is now common to download games through digital distribution and store them on internal or external digital storage de... |
1,335 | Some consoles are considered dedicated consoles, in which games available for the console are "baked" onto the hardware, either by being programmed via the circuitry or set in the read-only flash memory of the console. Thus, the console's game library cannot be added to or changed directly by the user. The user can typ... |
1,336 | Home video game consoles are meant to be connected to a television or other type of monitor, with power supplied through an outlet. This requires the unit to be used in a fixed location, typically at home in one's living room. Separate game controllers, connected through wired or wireless connections, are used to provi... |
1,337 | Handheld game consoles are devices that typically include a built-in screen and game controller in their case, and contain a rechargeable battery or battery compartment. This allows the unit to be carried around and played anywhere, in contrast to a home game console. Examples include the Game Boy, the PlayStation Port... |
1,338 | Hybrid video game consoles are devices that can be used either as a handheld or as a home console. They have either a wired connection or docking station that connects the console unit to a television screen and fixed power source, and the potential to use a separate controller. However, they can also be used as a hand... |
1,339 | A microconsole is a home video game console that is typically powered by low-cost computing hardware, making the console lower-priced compared to other home consoles on the market. The majority of microconsoles, with a few exceptions such as the PlayStation TV and OnLive Game System, are Android-based digital media pla... |
1,340 | During the later part of video game history, there have been specialized consoles using computing components to offer multiple games to players. Most of these plug directly into one's television, and thus are often called plug-and-play consoles. They are also considered dedicated consoles since it is generally impossi... |
1,341 | Early console hardware was designed as customized printed circuit boards s, selecting existing integrated circuit chips that performed known functions, or programmable chips like erasable programmable read-only memory chips that could perform certain functions. Persistent computer memory was expensive, so dedicated co... |
1,342 | Improvements in console hardware followed with improvements in microprocessor technology and semiconductor device fabrication. Manufacturing processes have been able to reduce the feature size on chips , allowing more transistors and other components to fit on a chip, and at the same time increasing the circuit speeds ... |
1,343 | For the consoles of the 1980s to 1990s, these improvements were evident in the marketing in the late 1980s to 1990s during the "bit wars", where console manufacturers had focused on their console's processor's word size as a selling point. Consoles since the 2000s are more similar to personal computers, building in mem... |
1,344 | In comparison to the early years of the industry, where most consoles were made directly by the company selling the console, many consoles of today are generally constructed through a value chain that includes component suppliers, such as AMD and NVidia for CPU and GPU functions, and contract manufacturers including el... |
1,345 | Some of the commons elements that can be found within console hardware include: |
1,346 | All game consoles require player input through a game controller to provide a method to move the player character in a specific direction and a variation of buttons to perform other in-game actions such as jumping or interacting with the game world. Though controllers have become more featured over the years, they stil... |
1,347 | Controllers have come in a variety of styles over the history of consoles. Some common types include: |
1,348 | Numerous other controller types exist, including those that support motion controls, touchscreen support on handhelds and some consoles, and specialized controllers for specific types of games, such as racing wheels for racing games, light guns for shooting games, and musical instrument controllers for rhythm games. So... |
1,349 | A controller may be attached through a wired connection onto the console itself, or in some unique cases like the Famicom hardwired to the console, or with a wireless connection. Controllers require power, either provided by the console via the wired connection, or from batteries or a rechargeable battery pack for wire... |
1,350 | While the first game consoles were dedicated game systems, with the games programmed into the console's hardware, the Fairchild Channel F introduced the ability to store games in a form separate from the console's internal circuitry, thus allowing the consumer to purchase new games to play on the system. Since the Chan... |
1,351 | While magnetic storage, such as tape drives and floppy disks, had been popular for software distribution with early personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s, this format did not see much use in console system. There were some attempts, such as the Bally Astrocade and APF-M1000 using tape drives, as well as the Disk Sy... |
1,352 | In addition to built-in internal storage, newer consoles often give the consumer the ability to use external storage media to save game date, downloaded games, or other media files from the console. Early iterations of external storage were achieved through the use of flash-based memory cards, first used by the Neo Geo... |
1,353 | With Internet-enabled consoles, console manufacturers offer both free and paid-subscription services that provide value-added services atop the basic functions of the console. Free services generally offer user identity services and access to a digital storefront, while paid services allow players to play online games,... |
1,354 | Certain consoles saw various add-ons or accessories that were designed to attach to the existing console to extend its functionality. The best example of this was through the various CD-ROM add-ons for consoles of the fourth generation such as the TurboGrafx CD, Atari Jaguar CD, and the Sega CD. Other examples of add-o... |
1,355 | Consumers can often purchase a range of accessories for consoles outside of the above categories. These can include: |
1,356 | Console or game development kits are specialized hardware units that typically include the same components as the console and additional chips and components to allow the unit to be connected to a computer or other monitoring device for debugging purposes. A console manufacturer will make the console's dev kit availabl... |
1,357 | Since the release of the Nintendo Famicom / Nintendo Entertainment System, most video game console manufacturers employ a strict licensing scheme that limit what games can be developed for it. Developers and their publishers must pay a fee, typically based on royalty per unit sold, back to the manufacturer. The cost va... |
1,358 | The licensing fee may be collected in a few different ways. In the case of Nintendo, the company generally has controlled the production of game cartridges with its lockout chips and optical media for its systems, and thus charges the developer or publisher for each copy it makes as an upfront fee. This also allows Nin... |
1,359 | With optical media, where the console manufacturer may not have direct control on the production of the media, the developer or publisher typically must establish a licensing agreement to gain access to the console's proprietary storage format for the media as well as to use the console and manufacturer's logos and bra... |
1,360 | With the rise of indie game development, the major console manufacturers have all developed entry level routes for these smaller developers to be able to publish onto consoles at far lower costs and reduced royalty rates. Programs like Microsoft's ID@Xbox give developers most of the needed tools for free after validati... |
1,361 | Similar licensing concepts apply for third-party accessory manufacturers. |
1,362 | Consoles, like most consumer electronic devices, have limited lifespans. There is great interest in preservation of older console hardware for archival and historical purposes, as games from older consoles, as well as arcade and personal computers, remain of interest. Computer programmers and hackers have developed emu... |
1,363 | To help support older games and console transitions, manufacturers started to support backward compatibility on consoles in the same family. Sony was the first to do this on a home console with the PlayStation 2 which was able to play original PlayStation content, and subsequently became a sought-after feature across m... |
1,364 | Consoles may be shipped in a variety of configurations, but typically will include one base configuration that include the console, one controller, and sometimes a pack-in game. Manufacturers may offer alternate stock keeping unit options that include additional controllers and accessories or different pack-in games. ... |
1,365 | The more recent console generations have also seen multiple versions of the same base console system either offered at launch or presented as a mid-generation refresh. In some cases, these simply replace some parts of the hardware with cheaper or more efficient parts, or otherwise streamline the console's design for pr... |
1,366 | In other cases, the hardware changes create multiple lines within the same console family. The base console unit in all revisions share fundamental hardware, but options like internal storage space and RAM size may be different. Those systems with more storage and RAM would be marked as a higher performance variant ava... |
1,367 | Consoles when originally launched in the 1970s and 1980s were about US$200−300, and with the introduction of the ROM cartridge, each game averaged about US$30−40. Over time the launch price of base consoles units has generally risen to about US$400−500, with the average game costing US$60. Exceptionally, the period of ... |
1,368 | When adjusted for inflation, the price of consoles has generally followed a downward trend, from US$800−1,000 from the early generations down to US$500−600 for current consoles. This is typical for any computer technology, with the improvements in computing performance and capabilities outpacing the additional costs to... |
1,369 | Since the Nintendo Entertainment System, console pricing has stabilized on the razorblade model, where the consoles are sold at little to no profit for the manufacturer, but they gain revenue from each game sold due to console licensing fees and other value-added services around the console . Console manufacturers have... |
1,370 | The competition within the video game console market as subset of the video game industry is an area of interest to economics with its relatively modern history, its rapid growth to rival that of the film industry, and frequent changes compared to other sectors. |
1,371 | Effects of unregulated competition on the market were twice seen early in the industry. The industry had its first crash in 1977 following the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, Atari's home versions of Pong and the Coleco Telstar, which led other third-party manufacturers, using inexpensive General Instruments processor... |
1,372 | The Nintendo Entertainment System also brought the concept of a video game mascot as the representation of a console system as a means to sell and promote the unit, and for the NES was Mario. The use of mascots in businesses had been a tradition in Japan, and this had already proven successful in arcade games like Pac-... |
1,373 | Another type of competitive edge used by console manufacturers around the same time was the notion of "bits" or the size of the word used by the main CPU. The TurboGrafx-16 was the first console to push on its bit-size, advertising itself as a "16-bit" console, though this only referred to part of its architecture whil... |
1,374 | Generally, increased console numbers gives rise to more consumer options and better competition, but the exclusivity of titles made the choice of console for consumers an "all-or-nothing" decision for most. Further, with the number of available consoles growing with the fifth and sixth generations, game developers beca... |
1,375 | Competition in the console market in the 2010s and 2020s is considered an oligarchy between three main manufacturers: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. The three use a combination of first-party games exclusive to their console and negotiate exclusive agreements with third-party developers to have their games be exclusive... |
1,376 | Of the three, Microsoft and Sony, both with their own hardware manufacturing capabilities, remain at a leading edge approach, attempting to gain a first-mover advantage over the other with adaption of new console technology. Nintendo is more reliant on its suppliers and thus instead of trying to compete feature for fea... |
1,377 | In computer science, a high-level programming language is a programming language with strong abstraction from the details of the computer. In contrast to low-level programming languages, it may use natural language elements, be easier to use, or may automate significant areas of computing systems , making the process ... |
1,378 | Note that languages are not strictly interpreted languages or compiled languages. Rather, implementations of language behavior use interpreting or compiling. For example, ALGOL 60 and Fortran have both been interpreted . Similarly, Java shows the difficulty of trying to apply these labels to languages, rather than to i... |
1,379 | Alternatively, it is possible for a high-level language to be directly implemented by a computer – the computer directly executes the HLL code. This is known as a high-level language computer architecture – the computer architecture itself is designed to be targeted by a specific high-level language. The Burroughs larg... |
1,380 | x86 is a family of complex instruction set computer instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introduced in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit 8080 microprocessor, with memory segmentation as a solution for addre... |
1,381 | The term is not synonymous with IBM PC compatibility, as this implies a multitude of other computer hardware. Embedded systems and general-purpose computers used x86 chips before the PC-compatible market started, some of them before the IBM PC debut. |
1,382 | As of June 2022, most desktop and laptop computers sold are based on the x86 architecture family, while mobile categories such as smartphones or tablets are dominated by ARM. At the high end, x86 continues to dominate computation-intensive workstation and cloud computing segments. The fastest supercomputer in the TOP50... |
1,383 | In the 1980s and early 1990s, when the 8088 and 80286 were still in common use, the term x86 usually represented any 8086-compatible CPU. Today, however, x86 usually implies a binary compatibility also with the 32-bit instruction set of the 80386. This is due to the fact that this instruction set has become something o... |
1,384 | A few years after the introduction of the 8086 and 8088, Intel added some complexity to its naming scheme and terminology as the "iAPX" of the ambitious but ill-fated Intel iAPX 432 processor was tried on the more successful 8086 family of chips, applied as a kind of system-level prefix. An 8086 system, including copro... |
1,385 | Although the 8086 was primarily developed for embedded systems and small multi-user or single-user computers, largely as a response to the successful 8080-compatible Zilog Z80, the x86 line soon grew in features and processing power. Today, x86 is ubiquitous in both stationary and portable personal computers, and is al... |
1,386 | Modern x86 is relatively uncommon in embedded systems, however, and small low power applications , and low-cost microprocessor markets, such as home appliances and toys, lack significant x86 presence. Simple 8- and 16-bit based architectures are common here, as well as simpler RISC architectures like RISC-V, although t... |
1,387 | There have been several attempts, including by Intel, to end the market dominance of the "inelegant" x86 architecture designed directly from the first simple 8-bit microprocessors. Examples of this are the iAPX 432 , the Intel 960, Intel 860 and the Intel/Hewlett-Packard Itanium architecture. However, the continuous re... |
1,388 | The table below lists processor models and model series implementing various architectures in the x86 family, in chronological order. Each line item is characterized by significantly improved or commercially successful processor microarchitecture designs. |
1,389 | At various times, companies such as IBM, VIA, NEC, AMD, TI, STM, Fujitsu, OKI, Siemens, Cyrix, Intersil, C&T, NexGen, UMC, and DM&P started to design or manufacture x86 processors intended for personal computers and embedded systems. Other companies that designed or manufactured x86 or x87 processors include ITT Corpo... |
1,390 | Such x86 implementations were seldom simple copies but often employed different internal microarchitectures and different solutions at the electronic and physical levels. Quite naturally, early compatible microprocessors were 16-bit, while 32-bit designs were developed much later. For the personal computer market, real... |
1,391 | After the fully pipelined i486, in 1993 Intel introduced the Pentium brand name for their new set of superscalar x86 designs. With the x86 naming scheme now legally cleared, other x86 vendors had to choose different names for their x86-compatible products, and initially some chose to continue with variations of the nu... |
1,392 | AMD meanwhile designed and manufactured the advanced but delayed 5k86 , which, internally, was closely based on AMD's earlier 29K RISC design; similar to NexGen's Nx586, it used a strategy such that dedicated pipeline stages decode x86 instructions into uniform and easily handled micro-operations, a method that has rem... |
1,393 | Some early versions of these microprocessors had heat dissipation problems. The 6x86 was also affected by a few minor compatibility problems, the Nx586 lacked a floating-point unit and pin-compatibility, while the K5 had somewhat disappointing performance when it was introduced. |
1,394 | Customer ignorance of alternatives to the Pentium series further contributed to these designs being comparatively unsuccessful, despite the fact that the K5 had very good Pentium compatibility and the 6x86 was significantly faster than the Pentium on integer code. AMD later managed to grow into a serious contender with... |
1,395 | There were also other contenders, such as Centaur Technology , Rise Technology, and Transmeta. VIA Technologies' energy efficient C3 and C7 processors, which were designed by the Centaur company, were sold for many years following their release in 2005. Centaur's 2008 design, the VIA Nano, was their first processor wit... |
1,396 | Many additions and extensions have been added to the original x86 instruction set over the years, almost consistently with full backward compatibility. The architecture family has been implemented in processors from Intel, Cyrix, AMD, VIA Technologies and many other companies; there are also open implementations, such ... |
1,397 | However, in 2014 the Shanghai-based Chinese company Zhaoxin, a joint venture between a Chinese company and VIA Technologies, began designing VIA based x86 processors for desktops and laptops. The release of its newest "7" family of x86 processors , which are not quite as fast as AMD or Intel chips but are still state o... |
1,398 | The instruction set architecture has twice been extended to a larger word size. In 1985, Intel released the 32-bit 80386 which gradually replaced the earlier 16-bit chips in computers during the following years; this extended programming model was originally referred to as the i386 architecture but Intel later dubbe... |
1,399 | In 1999–2003, AMD extended this 32-bit architecture to 64 bits and referred to it as x86-64 in early documents and later as AMD64. Intel soon adopted AMD's architectural extensions under the name IA-32e, later using the name EM64T and finally using Intel 64. Microsoft and Sun Microsystems/Oracle also use term "x64", wh... |
1,400 | In 2023, Intel proposed a major change to the architecture referred to as x86-S , which aims to remove support for legacy execution modes and instructions. A processor implementing this proposal would start execution directly in long mode and would only support 64-bit operating systems. 32-bit code would only be suppor... |
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