Note: The template is not my work. There are blanks here that are filled that are my work.

Requirements

Work through College Board Unit 4… blog, add definitions, and pictures. Be creative, for instance make a story of Computing and Networks that is related to your PBL experiences this year.

How a Computer Works

As we have learned, a computer needs aa program to do something smart. The sequence of a program initiates a series of actions with the computers Central Processing Unit (CPU). This component is essentially a binary machine focussing on program instructions provided. The CPU retrieives and stores the data it acts upon in Random Access Memory (RAM). Between the CPU, RAM, and Storage Devices a computer can work with many programs and large amounts of data.

List specification of your Computer, or Computers if working as Pair/Trio

Define or describe usage of Computer using Computer Programs. Pictures are preferred over a lot of text. Use your experience.

Computer Hardware

The Internet

Watch/review College Board Daily Video for 4.1.1

Watch/review College Board Daily Video 4.1.2

Full Stack

     User Machine  <---> Frontend Server <---> Backend Server
    +-----------+         +-----------+         +-----------+
    |  Browser  |         |  GH Page  |         |   Flask   |
    +-----------+    ^    +-----------+    ^    +-----------+
    |    HTTP   |    |    |    HTTP   |    |    |    HTTP   |
    +-----------+    |    +-----------+    |    +-----------+
    |    TCP    |    |    |    TCP    |    |    |    TCP    |   
    +-----------+    |    +-----------+    |    +-----------+
    |     IP    |    V    |     IP    |    V    |     IP    |
    +-----------+         +-----------+         +-----------+
    |  Network  |  <--->  |  Network  |  <--->  |  Network  |
    +-----------+         +-----------+         +-----------+

The “http” layer is an application layer protocol in the TCP/IP stack, used for communication between web browsers and web servers. It is the protocol used for transmitting data over the World Wide Web.

The “transport” layer (TCP) is responsible for providing reliable data transfer between applications running on different hosts. The TCP protocol segments the data into smaller chunks called “segments”. Each segment contains a sequence number that identifies its position in the original stream of data, as well as other control information such as source and destination port numbers, and checksums for error detection.

The “ip” layer is responsible for packetizing data received from the TCP layer of the protocol stack, and then encapsulating the data into IP packets. The IP packets are then sent to the lower layers of the protocol stack for transmission over the network.

The “network” layer is responsible for routing data packets between networks using the Internet Protocol (IP). This layer handles tasks such as packet addressing and routing, fragmentation and reassembly, and network congestion control.

Fault Tolerance

Watch both Daily videos for 4.2

“The network activity” is a bit vague given there were lots of networks in the College Board Videos

There were lots of networks like this on the College Board video where there were devices with connections, with one device having only one connection. In this case, the network is not fault-tolerant since device F needs to be connected to device C to be connected to the network. As such, if this connection fails, device F is entirely disconnected from the network.

Fault tolerance has to do with maintaining connectivity to the Internet even if a device or a connection (interface) fails. As such, connections between devices must be redundant to ensure if one device/connection goes down, it is still possible to ensure connectivity between devices. In terms of routing networks, Hot Standby Routing Protocol is used to configure routing in case a router goes down, and this is covered in my Final Exam 2 Reflection

Parallel and Distributed Computing

Review previous lecture on Parallel Computing and watch Daily vidoe 4.3. Think of ways to make something in you team project to utilize Cores more effectively. Here are some thoughts to add to your story of Computers and Networks…

Last week we discussed parallel computing on local machine. There are many options. Here is something to get parallel computing work with a tool called Ray.

  • Review this article… Can you get parallel code on images to work more effectively? I have not tried Ray.
import ray

# define a simple function that takes a number and returns its square
def square(x):
    return x * x

# initialize Ray
ray.init()

# create a remote function that squares a list of numbers in parallel
@ray.remote
def square_list(nums):
    return [square(num) for num in nums]

# define a list of numbers to square
nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

# split the list into two parts
split_idx = len(nums) // 2
part1, part2 = nums[:split_idx], nums[split_idx:]

# call the remote function in parallel on the two parts
part1_result = square_list.remote(part1)
part2_result = square_list.remote(part2)

# get the results and combine them
result = ray.get(part1_result) + ray.get(part2_result)

# print the result
print(result)