Freude im Ausland

I am reading through my text book to prepare for my final next Monday, and I happened upon some really funny sentences that both shocked me out of the textbook stupor one gets when studying for a test and made me smile. Imagine reading along in your textbook and stressing about how if you don’t learn how to calculate bus cycles and figure out what Microprocessing is, there is NO WAY that you are going to pass this final on Monday. Then you start reading about examples of current CPU chips and you start to relax a little bit because it is a slight bit interesting. Then you read this paragraph:

“The chip is outfitted with a mounting bracket for a heat sink to distribute the heat and a fan to cool it. To get some idea of what the problem is, turn on a 60-watt light bulb, let it warm us, and then put your hands around it (but do not touch it). This amount of heat must be dissipated continuously.”

You are mildly interested in the dilemma, but it still is rather textbooky and therefore non-interesting. Then you read the next sentence:

“Consequently, when a Pentium 4 has outlived its usefulness as a CPU, it can always be used as a camp stove.”

WHAT? Who writes things like that in a textbook? Apparently really good textbook writers. I am probably never going to forget the reason that Pentium 4 chips need cooling systems.

Then I read a bit further. The next paragraph describes why computers go to sleep:

“According to the laws of physics, anything that puts out a lot of heat must suck in a lot of energy. In a portable computer with a limited battery charge, using a lot of energy is not desirable because it drains the battery quickly. To address this issue, Intel has provided a way to put the CPU to sleep when it is idle and to put it into a deep sleep when it is likely to be that way for a while. There are five states provided, ranging from fully active to deep sleep. In the intermediate states, some functionality (such as cache snooping and interrupt handling) is enabled, but other functions are disabled. When in deep sleep state, the cache and register values are preserved, but a clock and all the interval units are turned off. When in a deep sleep, a hardware signal is required to wake it up.”

Again, the paragraph is quite textbooky. But the next sentence…:

“It is not know whether a Pentium 4 can dream when it is in deep sleep.”

Ahhh…I love satire and irony. Now if I could just read further I would be able to finish with CPUs and go on to learning about Microprocessors (the really scary stuff). Keep rooting for me!

(Excerpts taken from Structured Computer Organization, 5th edition, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.)

UPDATE!!!! Just started to read again and stumbled across this next paragraph about the Pentium 4:

“Despite sophisticated power management, the Pentium 4 can get very hot. The Heat management group deals with thermal management, allowing the CPU to indicate its environment that it is in danger of overheating. One of the ins asserted by the CPU if its internal temperature reaches 130°C (266°). If a CPU ever hits this temperature, it is probably dreaming about retirement and becoming a camp stove.”

Love it!!!!