Translate the following derivative words. Work with a partner and see how many words of the same word formation model you can add to this list.

noun or verb + -ive → adjective

to conserve – conservative; progress – progressive; effect – effective; mass – massive; to react – reactive

noun + -ful → adjective

use – useful; power – powerful; skill – skillful; success — successful

9. Translate the following complex words:

Software; electromagnetic; hardware; microprocessor; keyboard; computer-related; network; read-only; full-fledged; motherboard; chipset; breathtaking; northbridge; southbridge; self-test; battery-operated; multi-core; sky-rocket; checkpoint; typewrite

10. Translate the following terms analyzing their word-formation model:

Prototype; supercomputer; subsystem; installation; compiler; intranet; marketing; transistor; adjustment; controller; biometric; updating; supermarket; computerize; enforcement; programmer; user; competitor

11. Guess the meaning of the words in bold type:

Science – scientist — scientific; technology – technological – technologically; to increase – increasingly; important – unimportant; accurate – accurately; to compute – computer; translate – translation; to suit – suitable; to fabricate – fabrication; design – designer; to develop – development; use – usage; finite – infinite; to avail – available; to install – installation; to equip – equipment; to research – researcher; quick – quickly; to specialize – specialization;to use– to reuse

ACTIVE VOCABULARY

12. Read and memorize the following words and word combinations:

13. Read Text 9A to learn about computer use and computer engineering. The words and word combinations below will help you to understand the text; memorize these words:

CAD —computer-aided design—автоматизированное проектирование

VLSI — very large-scale integration — интеграция сверхвысокого уровня

CNC —computer numerical control — компьютерное числовое программное управление

FEA —finite-element analysis — анализ с использованием метода конечных элементов

PCB —Printed Circuit Board — печатная плата

circuit board — монтажная плата

COBOL — common business-oriented language — язык программирования КОБОЛ

Fortran — ФОРТРАН (алгоритмический язык )

C++, C — языки программирования

Java — язык Java — машинонезависимый объектно-ориентированный язык, разработанный фирмой Sun Microsystems для создания распределённых прикладных Web-систем

Intranet — 1) технология создания корпоративной локальной сети повышенной надёжности с ограниченным доступом, использующей сетевые стандарты и сетевые программно-аппаратные средства, аналогичные Internet; 2) внутрисетевой

customization — подгон под потребителя (приспособление товара к конкретным требованиям клиентов; выполнение по индивидуальному заказу; подгонка, оформление в соответствии с требованиями заказчика)

Text 9 A

Computer Use and Computer Engineering

As with all modern scientific and technological endeavours, computers and software play an increasingly important role. Numerical methods and simulations can help predict design performance more accurately than previous approximations.

Using computer-aided design (CAD) software, engineers are able to create more easily drawings and models of their designs. Computer models of designs can be checked for flaws without having to make expensive and time-consuming prototypes. The computer can automatically translate some models to instructions suitable for automatic machinery (e.g., CNC) to fabricate a design.

The computer also allows increased reuse of previously developed designs, by presenting an engineer with a library of predefined parts ready to be used in designs. Of late, the use of finite element method analysis (FEM analysis or FEA) software to study stress, temperature, flow as well as electromagnetic fields has gained importance. In addition, a variety of software is available to analyze dynamic systems. Electronics engineers make use of a variety of circuit schematics software to aid in the creation of circuit designs that perform an electronic task when used for a printed circuit board (PCB) or a computer chip.

Computer Engineering is a discipline encompassing electronic engineering and computer science. This hybrid of electronic engineering and computer science allows the computer engineer to work on both software and hardware, and to integrate the two. Computer engineers are involved in all aspects of computing, from the design of individual microprocessors, personal computers, and supercomputers, to the integration of computer systems into other kinds of systems, e.g. a motor vehicle has a number of subsystems that are computer and digitally oriented. Electronic equipment today relies very heavily on computer technology and so electronic engineers and computer engineers may work together to design and manufacture electronic equipment which requires both hardware and software design. Common computer engineering tasks include writing embedded software for real-time microcontrollers, designing VLSI chips, working with analog sensors, designing mixed signal circuit boards, and designing operating systems.

The high demand for engineers who are able to design and manage all forms of computer systems in industry has led to tertiary institutions around the world to implement a new bachelor’s degree generally called computer engineering. Both computer engineering and electronic engineering programmes include analog and digital circuit design into their curriculums. Computer hardware engineers research, design, develop, test, and oversee the installation of computer hardware and supervise its manufacture and installation. Hardware refers to computer chips, circuit boards, computer systems, and related equipment such as keyboards, modems, and printers. Computer software engineers design and develop the software systems that control computers. The work of computer hardware engineers is very similar to that of electronics engineers, but, unlike electronics engineers, computer hardware engineers work exclusively with computers and computer-related equipment. The rapid advances in computer technology are largely a result of the research, development, and design efforts of computer hardware engineers.

The explosive impact of computers and information technology on our everyday lives has generated a need to design and develop new computer software systems and to incorporate new technologies into a rapidly growing range of applications. The tasks performed by workers known as computer software engineers evolve quickly, reflecting new areas of specialization or changes in technology, as well as the preferences and practices of employers.

Computer software engineers apply the principles and techniques of computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis to the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the software and systems that enable computers to perform their many applications.

Software engineers working in applications or systems development analyze users’ needs and design, construct, test, and maintain computer applications software or systems. Software engineers can be involved in the design and development of many types of software, including software for operating systems and network distribution, and compilers, which convert programmes for execution on a computer. In programming, or coding, software engineers instruct a computer, line by line, how to perform a function. They also solve technical problems that arise. Software engineers must possess strong programming skills, but are more concerned with developing algorithms and analyzing and solving programming problems than with actually writing code.

Computer applications software engineers analyze users’ needs and design, construct, and maintain general computer applications software or specialized utility programmes. These workers use different programming languages, depending on the purpose of the programme. The programming languages most often used are C, C++, and Java, with Fortran and COBOL used less commonly. Some software engineers develop both packaged systems and systems software or create customized applications. Computer systems software engineers coordinate the construction and maintenance of a company’s computer systems and plan their future growth. Working with the company, they coordinate each department’s computer needs — ordering, inventory, billing, and payroll recordkeeping, for example — and make suggestions about its technical direction. They also might set up the company’s intranets—networks that link computers within the organization and ease communication among the various departments.

Systems software engineers work for companies that configure, implement, and install complete computer systems. These workers may be members of the marketing or sales staff, serving as the primary technical resource for sales workers and customers. They also may be involved in product sales and in providing their customers with continuing technical support. Since the selling of complex computer systems often requires substantial customization for the purchaser’s organization, software engineers help to explain the requirements necessary for installing and operating the new system in the purchaser’s computing environment. In addition, systems software engineers are responsible for ensuring security across the systems they are configuring.

Computer software engineers often work as part of a team that designs new hardware, software, and systems. A core team may comprise engineering, marketing, manufacturing, and design people, who work together until the product is released.

Notes on the text

payroll recordkeeping - ведение записей платежной ведомости

billing - составление счетов, накладной

TEXT AND VOCABULARY EXERCISES

14. Find in the text the words or phrases which mean the same as:

15. Find in the text the synonyms to the following words:

16. Give Russian equivalents to the following word combinations:

Scientific and technological endeavours; numerical methods; time-consuming prototypes; to be suitable; to reuse previously developed designs; digitally oriented; electronic equipment; to rely on; hardware and software design; high demand; analog and digital circuit design; rapid advances in computer technology; users’ needs; to install complete computer systems; to design new hardware

17. Match each word in A with the correct Russian equivalent in B:

18. Choose among the words in parentheses the one that corresponds to the text above to complete the sentences:

1. As with all modern scientific and technological endeavours, computers and software play an increasingly ___ role.

(a. negligible; b. insignificant; c. important)

2. Numerical methods and simulations can help predict design performance more accurately than ___ approximations.

(a. previous; b. future; c. recent)

3. Using computer-aided design software, engineers are ___ create more easily drawings and models of their designs.

(a. able to; b. allow to; c. have to)

4. The use of finite element method analysis software to study stress, temperature, flow as well as electromagnetic fields ___ importance.

(a. will gain; b. has gained; c. gained)

5. Computer Engineering ___ a discipline encompassing electronic engineering and computer science.

(a. was; b. are; с. is)

6. Electronic ___ today relies very heavily on computer technology.

(a. equipment; b. production; c. goods)

7. The rapid ___ in computer technology are largely a result of the research, development, and design efforts of computer hardware engineers.

(a. backwardness; b. development; c. advances)

19 .Fill in the gaps with the words from the box:

Nearly every desktop 1 ___ and server in use today contains one or more hard-disk 2 ___. Every mainframe and supercomputer is normally connected 3 ___ hundreds of them. You can even find VCR-type (VCR - Video Cassette Recorder - кассетный видеомагнитофон) devices and 4 ___ that use hard disks instead of 5 ___. These billions of hard disks do one thing well — they 6 ___ changing digital information in a relatively permanent form. They give computers the ability to remember things when the 7 ___ goes out.

Check your answers on p. 280.

20. Read the following text and render it according to the following scheme:

Early History of Computer (Part 1)

The development of the modern day computer was the result of advances in technologies and man’s need to quantify. Papyrus helped early man to record language and numbers. Some of the earlier counting machines lacked the technology to make the design work.

The abacus was one of the first counting machines. Its only value is that it aids the memory of the human performing the calculation. A skilled abacus operator can work on addition and subtraction problems at the speed of a person equipped with a hand calculator (multiplication and division are slower).

The abacus is often wrongly attributed to China. In fact, the oldest surviving abacus was used in 300 B.C. by the Babylonians. The abacus is still in use today. A modern abacus consists of rings that slide over rods, but the older one dates from the time when pebbles were used for counting (the word «calculus» comes from the Latin word for pebble).

In 1617 an eccentric Scotsman named John Napier invented logarithms, which are a technology that allows multiplication to be performed via addition. The magic ingredient is the logarithm of each operand, which was originally obtained from a printed table. But Napier also invented an alternative to tables, where the logarithm values were carved on ivory sticks which are now called Napier’s Bones.

Napier’s invention led directly to the slide rule, first built in England in 1632 and still in use in the 1960’s by the NASA engineers of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programmes which landed men on the moon. The first gear-driven calculating machine to actually be built was probably the calculating clock, so named by its inventor, the German professor Wilhelm Schickard in 1623. This device got little publicity because Schickard died soon afterward in the bubonic plague.

In 1642 Blaise Pascal invented the Pascaline as an aid for his father who was a tax collector. Pascal built 50 of this gear-driven one-function calculator (it could only add) but couldn’t sell many because of their exorbitant cost and because they really weren't that accurate (at that time it was not possible to fabricate gears with the required precision). Up until the present age when car dashboards went digital, the odometer portion of a car’s speedometer used the very same mechanism as the Pascaline to increment the next wheel after each full revolution of the prior wheel. Pascal was a child prodigy. At the age of 12, he was discovered doing his version of Euclid’s thirty-second proposition on the kitchen floor. Pascal went on to invent probability theory, the hydraulic press, and the syringe.

Just a few years after Pascal, the German Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (co-inventor with Newton of calculus) managed to build a four-function (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) calculator that he called the stepped reckoner because, instead of gears, it employed fluted drums having ten flutes arranged around their circumference in a stair-step fashion. Although the stepped reckoner employed the decimal number system (each drum had 10 flutes), Leibniz was the first to advocate use of the binary number system which is fundamental to the operation of modern computers. Leibniz is considered one of the greatest of the philosophers but he died poor and alone.

In 1801 the Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a power loom that could base its weave (and hence the design on the fabric) upon a pattern automatically read from punched wooden cards, held together in a long row by rope. Descendents of these punched cards have been in use ever since (remember the «hanging chad» from the Florida presidential ballots of the year 2000?).

Consult the TEXTS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING and and learn about the contribution electrical engineering has made to the development of electronics and computer sciences (Text 28). Be ready to discuss the information you have read.

22. Read the text below to find answers to the given questions. The words and word combinations below which you should memorize will help you to understand the text:

Read-only memory —постоянная память, постоянное запоминающее устройство, ПЗУ

Hard drive —накопитель на жестких дисках, НМД

Initial programme load —начальная загрузка программы

Boot up —программа начального пуска, to boot up — загружать

Random access memory —память (запоминающее устройство) с произвольной выборкой, ЗУПВ; оперативное запоминающее устройство, ОЗУ

Integrated circuit —интегральная схема

Text 9 B

Computer Inside

1. What kinds of things get stored in read-only memory, as opposed to those stored on the hard drive?

When you first turn on a typical computer, it must run an initial programme that sets up the operating system. This initial programme has to run even before the computer is able to interact with its hard drive, so the programme must be available at the very instant the computer's power becomes available. Read-only memory is used for this initial boot up operation. Unlike normal random access memory, which is usually «volatile» and loses its stored information when power is removed, read-only memory retains its information without power. When you turn on the computer, this read-only memory provides the instructions the computer uses to begin loading the operating system from the hard drive.

2. How does an integrated circuit perform computations?

The transistors used in digital integrated circuits, including microprocessors, act primarily as electronically controlled switches. These transistor switches permit the electric charge on or electric current in one wire to control the electric charge on or current in another wire. In digital electronics, a wire’s charge or current state is used to represent a single binary digit — either a 1 or a 0. By combining transistors in modestly complicated arrangements, the states of several wires together can control the states of several other wires.

This increased complexity allows for simple functions such as binary addition to be performed — for example, the charges on two wires can be used to control the charges on two other wires so that the charges on the second pair of wires represent the single binary sum of the two individual numbers represented by charges on the first pair of wires. More complicated adders can be assembled from more transistors and finally multipliers can be assembled from a collection of adders. Overall, it only takes a few arrangements of electrically controlled switches to form the primitive elements from which incredibly complicated digital processors can be built.

3. How does a computer chip work?

A computer chip is also known as a digital integrated circuit. It is typically a thin wafer of silicon, cut from a single crystal of that element. The surface of the wafer has been chemically modified and it has had intricate patterns of aluminum wires and other structures cut and deposited photographically on its surface to form enormous numbers of transistors and other special structures. Each of these transistors is an electronically controllable switch. A tiny adjustment in the electric charge on the control element of one of these transistors — its gate — can dramatically alter that transistor's current carrying ability. These transistors work together to perform task that range from remembering one bit of information to multiplying two huge numbers together. The millions of transistors on a typical computer chip are able to perform extremely complicated tasks, as we see everyday in modern computers.

4. How does an integrated circuit store so much information?

An integrated circuit is formed by using photographic techniques to sculpt the surface of a silicon crystal, to add chemicals to the silicon, and to deposit layers of other materials on top of the silicon. As part of this sculpting and coating process, a typical computer chip will have tiny memory cells formed on it. These cells usually consist of a tiny pad of aluminum on which a small amount of electric charge can be stored. To store one piece of information, a «bit», on one of these pads, electronic devices called MOSFETs* — built right into the silicon surface — are used to control the flow of charge onto the pad. The amount of charge on the pad determines the bit's value. The charge remains on the pad, thus storing the bit, until it's time to recall the bit. At that time, the MOSFETs allow the charge to flow off the pad and into electronic devices that determine what the stored value is.

5. Is it possible to have memory in a computer monitor?

In fact, many modern monitors do have memory in them. However, this memory isn't used for the same information that's handled in the computer itself. Instead, the monitor’s memory is used to control the monitor’s behavior.

Many sophisticated monitors are equipped with digital controllers that are almost full-fledged computers themselves. These controllers can adjust the size and position of the screen image and the manner in which that image is built. This work by the controller allows the monitor to respond properly when the computer changes the screen resolution or the refresh rate (the frequency with which the image you see is rebuilt).

The controller requires memory to operate and it also needs to store data that it can expect to recover next time you turn the monitor on. On a sophisticated monitor, you adjust the image size by pushing buttons under the screen and the monitor uses special memory to record your button presses. When the monitor is turned on, it recalls its record of your adjustments and uses them to return the image size to what it was last time the monitor was on.

6. How do notebook monitors work?

These displays use liquid crystals, liquids that contain long chain or disk-shaped molecules. These molecules can be aligned by external electric fields or by their own interactions with one another to form very orderly arrays; hence the name «liquid crystals». The extent to which these molecules are oriented determines their optical properties.

A notebook computer uses electric fields to orient or disorient the liquid crystals and control their optical properties. With some help from other optical devices, the notebook computer can make these liquid crystals block or unblock light to appear dark or light. Adding colour filters allows them to produce coloured images on their screens. Not until recent times did people understand how this prophecy could possibly come to pass. There was simply no way that anyone could control the buying and selling activities on such a large scale. Certainly it will be a monumental task to keep track of all men, and their financial transactions, all across the globe.

Advances in computer technology have placed the world on the verge of an identification system capable of monitoring virtually every human transaction. Modern technology has created a new electronic world without borders. With modern computer technology, satellites, and devices like the Global Positioning System device can track anyone within 3 feet anywhere in the world. And new developments in biometric and smart card technology make such a feat seem more plausible as well. Since originally writing about these emerging technologies more than six years ago, the advancements in recent years have been breathtaking.

Notes on the text

*MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) - канальный полевой униполярный МОП-транзистор

full-fledged — окончательно готовый, полностью отработанный

(напр., о разработанной системе программного обеспечения)

TEXT AND VOCABULARY EXERCISES

23. Find in the text the words or phrases which mean the same as: