The advent of the integrated circuit fundamentally changed how we interact with our surroundings. The ability to make computations on an ever-more microscopic scale has led to pocketable devices more powerful than the computers that powered the moon landing. Even so, those devices still use a fundamental structure - the fetch/execute cycle, engine of computation. Even some recent technology advancements rely on that same computational engine.
In this ninth lab, you'll look at new technology, and more closely examine the fetch/execute cycle. As you explore, review your answers from the To consider: section above. Have you changed your mind about any of them?
This video was made before Google Glass was available as a product. It shows the imagined implementation of a product that would bring web-browser-like functionality to a wearable display platform integrated into a pair of glasses. Now you can buy a variety of models available publicly from the Google Glass website. Recently, some Google Glass wearers have been subjects of news stories, including negative publicity around how wearers/users take advantage of the product's video capturing abilities.
The following closeup image of those capsules is from Wikimedia Commons user HorsePunchKid:
E-ink has been available in products available for purchase for some time, but it is still seen by many as continuing to be revolutionary.
The cycle repeats until the controller is given instructions to stop. These five simple steps, along with a very small number of instructions, are the foundation of practically every modern digital technology.
Try IT: Creating a fetch/execute cycle of your own
It can be useful to use the fetch/execute cycle to break down complex tasks into
more manageable steps. Imagine you have a student who is visiting you from another
country. He or she does not speak your language, and you do not understand hers or his.
You are trying to teach this student how to do something he or she has never done before -
let's use making a pizza as an example. While the average student will learn more quickly
than a computer, and will be able to guess at next steps when computers can't,
assume that following the fetch/execute cycle is the best way to show the student
how to complete the complex task. You can get as detailed as you like, but you
may find that you want to take a higher-level approach than a pizza making computer
might need.
Sometimes it's hard to believe that the simple instructions and five steps of the fetch/execute cycle could have enabled so much innovation. You may have grown up with smart phones and e-readers and bionic legs, but those products were not possible even fifty years ago. Consider what technology was available to you as in 1962, without the integrated circuit to miniaturize the machines that managed the fetch/execute cycles. The Computer History Museum has a good example of what a computer workroom looked like that year. If things have changed so quickly in the fifty-plus years since, where do you are we headed from here?
Consider reading howstuffworks.com's Introduction to Quantum Computing. Quantum computers don't use bits, with their binary states of 1 and 0, or presence and absence. Instead they use qubits, which can have a state of both 0 and 1, allowing for computation (or instructions) to take place on both states at the same time. What do you think the processing cycle will look like when quantum computers replace the binary-based digital ones we know today?