With today’s computers, tablets, and phones being more versatile and powerful, what’s powering these devices are the brain of the device. Known as the Central Processing Unit (CPU), this piece of technology has come a long way from 1974. Over the years, innovations have been made towards the CPU and allowed it to change the way we are able to use computers. From creative works to scientific studies, the CPU plays an important role in everyday use.

The academic journal, “IEEE Annals of the History of Computing”, the author, Stanley Mazor, presents one of the earliest CPUs for the market. Looking back at Intel’s chip that launched the personal computer industry, Stanley addresses the 8008’s current issues and limitations. Within 2 years later, the next revised chip doubled in its processing power, power efficiency, and fixed its architectural problems.

The author’s need to write about Intel’s earliest chips were to lay out early hurdles of a new piece of technology, eventually leading to industry standards of today. The publisher of the article is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, with its goal of documenting the history of computing. The article lists of the 8008’s specific components and its issues, providing more credibility.

The audience would be catered towards the technical community, as the article contains terms that the general population would not understand. Such examples of terminology specific to technology would be “internal stack memory”, “RAM”, “CPU”, 14-bit address”, “Moore’s Law”, and more. Not only is it the terms used in this article shows the audience is people interested in computing, the publisher’s discipline is in the history of computing. A peer-reviewed journal isn’t something the general audience would stumble upon. Not only has Stanley written articles for IEEE, he also worked for Intel as a microelectronics engineer.

Stanley’s intent of this article was to inform of the 8008’s relevance in the early CPU market. He included a background of the company, the redesign of a new CPU, the previous product’s faults, and its result. Included in the article are important dates, such as September 8, 1972, where “a proposal was circulated for management approval”, to account of accuracy of the redesign date. The author later provides dates and names of when and who contributed to the “clear market winner”. The tone of the article is sort of like a historical textbook. It is polite and formal, with no pathos used. The author is fair, listing out the company’s concerns of its current processor.

The genre of this article is a historic journal, as it lists specifics along with important dates, contributions, and specifics of Intel’s product. It includes Stanley’s first hand experiences in working on the first ever CPUs and the issues he faced when producing it.

Stanley is definitely knowledgeable on this subject, his stance towards his article is positive, as he is one of the co-inventors of this product. He acknowledges his own invention’s faults and sets to correct them. From sharing his faults, he is seen as passionate and critical.

The magazine article provides insight on the world’s first 64-bit CPU for consumers produced by AMD. Although Intel, another major market share on processors, produced its own 64-bit CPU in response to AMD, their processor lacked backwards compatibility. With the new 64-bit processor, Microsoft, a company that produces Windows XP, voiced its support for AMD’s new chip and released a Windows XP 64-bit OS.

The magazine article presents AMD’s latest and how it rivals Intel’s 64-bit processor. With the entire industry having to adapt to 64-bit, one of the major benefits of AMD processors are its backwards compatibility. However, Intel’s 64-bit processor doesn’t include compatibility with 32-bit. Because of this, AMD should dominate the market for a while. It is speculated that “Intel is at least 18 months away from having similar 64-bit desktop chip that is backwards compatible.”

The magazine is named MicroScope, published from TechTarget. Their magazines mostly cover computing, information technology, electrical, and electronics industries. Located in Massachusetts, its target audience is mostly found near Boston. The audience should be for people who are interested in technology and the general population.

The tone is formal, providing details on the current market of both AMD and Intel. The magazine talks about the brand new processor and its advantages with applications ranging from the general user to content creators. The article’s goal is to present the processor and compare it to Intel’s equivalent. The article gave an introduction, “Since the beginning of the PC industry, the microprocessor has been the heart of both desktops and laptops, and its evolution has been driven by Moore’s Law.” At the end, the article speculates both AMD’s success and Intel’s response, “It is interesting to note that this software development cycle is also a constant, and although the platform’s adoption cycle and its ultimate market acceptance is of a chicken and egg nature…Industry insiders suggest that Intel is at least 18 months away from having a similar 64-bit desktop chip that is backward compatible.”

The genre is a magazine, providing a run down on current innovations on the technology world. The medium is was mostly publisher on paper from 1982 to 2008. From there on, their articles were published online up until 2011, where it ceased operations.

The author’s stance is positive on AMD’s latest processor, praising it for stimulating competition and soon-to-be industry leading against Intel. From the article, “And at every step–whether it was the original 8088/8086 processor or the 80286, 80386, or various Pentium class chips.AMD would follow Intel’s original lead and match it in processing power, while at the same time charging vendors less for these similar chips.” This shows general bias towards AMD, following in Intels footsteps but beating them at their own game.

The newspaper article provides insight on the world’s first dual-core processor, provided by AMD. The difference from a dual-core and single-core is mostly the ability to run multiple processor-intensive applications efficiently. With this innovation, single-core is now obsolete. Although the benefit of dual-core is seen in content creator applications, the average consumer will see a difference in multitasking, such as reading emails while listening to MP3s.

This article provides details on the world’s dual-core CPU, allowing for performance that makes single-core processors irrelevant. With two cores, you are able to “mainstream consumers now have the ability to multi-task, creating digital content while listening to MP3s and writing e-mails, allowing them to do more in less time. Desktop dual-core processors can also deliver increasingly superior performance as multi-threaded applications spread from the server to the client and consumer markets. “ Processor-intensive applications, such as rendering, software development, 3D modeling, virtual machines, and digital audio, become more efficiently than a single core. This innovation later lead to the current standard of four cores in CPUs, available from a variety of devices.

The location of the publishers is located in Australia and claims to provide news on Asian companies, industries, infrastructure, and more. Because its author is unknown, its credibility is less reliable. The audience seems to be the general audience, as it gives a general breakdown on AMD’s latest. The newspaper labels “WHAT”, “WHO BENEFITS”, and “WHY” to guide the general audience in the right direction. Examples are provided to give a basic rundown, such as “Today’s PCs can operate in multi-tasking environments.” and “Desktop dual-core processors can also deliver increasingly superior performance as multi-threaded applications spread from the server to the client and consumer markets.”

The tone of the newspaper is polite and formal, as its purpose as a newspaper is to inform people in an unbiased way. The purpose is to inform people of a new processor that presents itself as innovating. From its first sentence, it’s very clear on what the article is trying to achieve. “AMD Broadens Highly Successful AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Family of Processors to Offer Exceptional Performance to Mainstream Consumers”.

The newspaper’s publisher is located in Australia, publishing daily from 1999 to 2012. The medium is supposedly a physical newspaper rather than online articles. The website that Asia Pulse runs is currently down and most likely out of business.

The stance from the author is to provide a brief introduction to AMD’s new CPU to the audience. The article introduced AMD’s  newest product, “The newest member to the AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor family provides consumers with an attractive entry point to dual-core computing on desktop PCs.” From the wording of the article, the author does not seem to be emotionally invested into AMD or processors. The terminology seems to be fit for the general population, only providing basic and key words needed to evaluate the processor’s specification, such as “64-bit”, “dual-core”, and “90 nm”.

AMD has launched a new architecture, named “Zen”, to compete against Intel. After years of being dominated by Intel, AMD plans to fight head-to-head with Intel’s latest and greatest. From AMD’s recent keynote, it is speculated that AMD will match Intel’s performance while matching or beating Intel for half the price.

From the past decade, AMD’s processors has fallen past Intel’s. Until recently, AMD presents a new architecture for its upcoming processors. Fans have been hoping for AMD to bring a solid processor back on the market. From AMD’s presentation, many people have been excited, but skeptical on AMD’s claims that their processor will be competitive to Intel. If AMD does keep their promise, consumers can finally enjoy so competition after the monopoly displayed by Intel.

The author, Ian Cutress, is a Senior Editor at Anandtech.com, has also obtained a doctorate degree, and “published nine author papers in high impact factor peer-reviewed journals”. The website itself is mostly about technology, ranging from consumer gadgets to PC components to enterprise topics. Based on the article, the audience seems to be for tech enthusiasts, however, the article’s terminology is also defined, allowing the general audience to understand whats going on.

The tone of the article is professional. From AMD’s presentation, Ian Cutress lists the most important features on AMD’s processor. Historically, AMD has been weak on their processor’s IPC. However, AMD claims that their IPC compared from their previous architecture will increase 52%. AMD also presented benchmarks, claiming to beat their competitor in both single threaded tests and multi-threaded tests. The article also provides pictures of AMD’s conference, detailing their capability towards their competitors and their pricing.

The article is written on the website, AnandTech, founded in 1997. Ranging from smartphones to PC components, the website releases multiple articles daily. AnandTech’s articles seems to be only website oriented. The website is still releasing various articles today.

The author’s stance on the topic seems to be passionate. Ian Curtress has been writing articles for AnandTech from 2010. The article doesn’t seem bias, presenting AMD as a promising competitor for Intel. The terminology used is described within the article, such as “Enthusiasts and analysts use the term IPC, or ‘Instructions Per Clock’, as a measure of how much the underlying microarchitecture improves from generation to generation.” Because of this, the general population to understand most of the article.

           Most of the authors remain unbiased towards their subject, as advances in the processor industry will benefit consumers and content creators. The author from AsiaPulse was unknown however, leading to the article to be less reliable. The audience were the same from all sources, varying from tech enthusiasts to the general population. The articles contain some tech related terms, however, they do a fine job in explaining their meaning, allowing most people to get a grasp on what the article is trying to say. The tone and purpose of these articles remained the same, remaining professional to inform their audience. Most of these articles were published online, being accessible to many people from all over the world who are interested in tech. All of the articles aim to provide readers with information regarding the latest news towards CPU processors. Because of the nature of these articles, their content is very straightforward.

 

Citations

S. Mazor, “Intel 8080 CPU Chip Development,” in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 70-73, April-June 2007.

Bajarin, Tim. “AMD takes the lead in 64-bit battle: following the recent launch of its Athlon 64-bit processor, AMD appears to be gaining ground on Intel’s position as market leader.” MicroScope,13 Oct. 2003, p. 16. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A110403537/ITOF?u=cuny_ccny&sid=ITOF&xid=f9005202. Accessed 14 Sept. 2019.

“AMD INTRODUCES THE AMD ATHLON 64 X2 DUAL-CORE PROCESSOR 3800+.” AsiaPulse News, 1 Aug. 2005. Gale OneFile: News, https://link-gale-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/apps/doc/A134654434/STND?u=cuny_ccny&sid=STND&xid=bcda7121. Accessed 14 Sept. 2019.

Cutress, Ian. “AMD Launches Ryzen: 52% More IPC, Eight Cores for Under $330, Pre-Order Today, On Sale March 2nd.” AnandTech, AnandTech, 22 Feb. 2017, https://www.anandtech.com/show/11143/amd-launch-ryzen-52-more-ipc-eight-cores-for-under-330-preorder-today-on-sale-march-2nd.