1. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han1 Lecture 9: Personal Computers - System Hardware and Software Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen Dept. of CSE, Helsinki University of Tech. Sangjin Han Dept. of EECS, Korea Advanced Institute of Sci. & Tech.

2. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han2 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

3. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han3 System hardware System architectures Processors (CPUs) Main memory Mass storage devices Display devices Graphics cards (GPUs) Sound related devices Other multimedia devices

4. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han4 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

5. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han5 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

6. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han6 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)..

7. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han7 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

8. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han8 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

9. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han9 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.

10. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han10 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..)

11. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han11 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?

12. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han12 System software Operating systems  Windows, Linux, Mac OS Multimedia APIs  Windows API, GDI, DirectX, DirectFB, OpenGL, SDL GUI toolkits  Windows, X Window, Java, examples

13. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han13 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)

14. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han14 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.

15. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han15 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

16. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han16 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

17. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han17 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)

18. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han18 User Interface Windowing Resources  Icons, cursors, menus... Common controls  Buttons, text fields, edits, syslinks (hypertext), scroll bars, list boxes... User input  Keyboard, mouse...

19. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han19 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

20. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han20 Windows Multimedia A basic Windows library Enables applications for example to play sounds and video and to record sounds Used in PlaySound example

21. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han21 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

22. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han22 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

23. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han23 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: /Documentation/DirectX9

24. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han24 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

25. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han25 DirectX Example: Far Cry

26. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han26 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

27. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han27 DirectFB Example: Quake 3: Arena

28. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han28 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

29. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han29 OpenGL ES Royalty-free, cross-platform API for full-function 2D and 3D graphics on embedded systems  Consoles  Phones  Appliances

30. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han30 OpenGL Example:Homeworld 2

31. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han31 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

32. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han32 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.

33. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han33 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

34. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han34 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

35. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han35 SDL Example:NetHack Falcon Eye

36. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han36 GUI toolkits What is a GUI toolkit? (Widget toolkit)  A set of basic building elements for graphical user interfaces. Widgets: GUI:

37. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han37 For Windows Windows API  A basis of all GUI toolkits on Windows MFC (Win32) Windows Forms (.NET) OWL  VCL  CLX  Of Borland

38. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han38 For X Window System X doesn’t offer any common widgets.  The reason why X applications look different. Two major GUI toolkits QT Managed by Trolltech Basis of KDE C++ GTK+ GPL Basis of GNOME C (with an OOP manner) Originally for GIMP

39. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han39 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

40. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han40 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)

41. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han41 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.

42. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han42 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++

43. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han43 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

44. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han44 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

45. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han45 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

46. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han46 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 3 rd party libraries are available Software

47. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han47 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

48. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han48 References Windows API  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en- us/winprog/winprog/windows_api_start_page.asp 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.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx  Developers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en- us/dnanchor/html/anch_directx.asphttp://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en- us/dnanchor/html/anch_directx.asp DirectFB  http://www.directfb.org/ http://www.directfb.org/ OpenGL  http://www.opengl.org/ http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL ES  http://www.khronos.org/opengles/ http://www.khronos.org/opengles/ Simple DirectMedia Layer  http://www.libsdl.org/ http://www.libsdl.org/

49. 2005-11-29Raine Mäki, Reima Saarinen, Sangjin Han49 Kiitos!