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.
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 2
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 3
System hardware
• System architectures• Processors (CPUs)• Main memory• Mass storage devices• Display devices• Graphics cards (GPUs)• Sound related devices• Other multimedia devices
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 4
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 5
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 6
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)..
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 7
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 8
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 9
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.
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 10
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..)
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 11
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?
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 12
System software
• Operating systems Windows, Linux, Mac OS
• Multimedia APIs Windows API, GDI, DirectX, DirectFB,
OpenGL, SDL
• GUI toolkits Windows, X Window, Java, examples
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 13
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)
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 14
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.
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 15
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 16
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 17
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)
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 18
User Interface
• Windowing• Resources
Icons, cursors, menus...
• Common controls Buttons, text fields, edits, syslinks
(hypertext), scroll bars, list boxes...
• User input Keyboard, mouse...
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 19
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 20
Windows Multimedia
• A basic Windows library• Enables applications for example to play
sounds and video and to record sounds• Used in PlaySound example
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 21
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 22
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 23
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 24
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 25
DirectX Example: Far Cry
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 26
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 27
DirectFB Example: Quake 3: Arena
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 28
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 29
OpenGL ES
• Royalty-free, cross-platform API for full-function 2D and 3D graphics on embedded systems Consoles Phones Appliances
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 30
OpenGL Example:Homeworld 2
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 31
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 32
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.
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 33
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 34
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 35
SDL Example:NetHack Falcon Eye
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 36
GUI toolkits
• What is a GUI toolkit? (Widget toolkit) A set of basic building elements for
graphical user interfaces.
Widgets: GUI:
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 37
For Windows
• Windows API A basis of all GUI toolkits on Windows
• MFC (Win32)• Windows Forms (.NET)
• OWL VCL CLX Of Borland
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 38
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 39
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 40
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)
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 41
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.
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 42
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++
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 43
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 44
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 45
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 46
PC vs. PlayStation2 (cont’d)
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 47
PC vs. PlayStation2 (cont’d)
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
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 48
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/
2005-11-29 Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han 49
Kiitos!