Technology Landscape - Big Picture

• OpenGL (Khronos Group) - Cross platform 2D and 3D computer graphics API widely used for Games, Computer Graphics and CAD - Computer Aided Design Implementation.
  • Official web site: https://www.opengl.org/
  • https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL-Refpages/
  • https://www.khronos.org/opengles/resources
  • https://github.com/g-truc/ogl-samples
• Vulkan (Khronos Group) - Cross platform 2D and 3D computer graphics low level API.
  • Official web site: https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/
  • https://vulkan-tutorial.com/
• DirectX (Microsoft MFST) - Windows-only API for 2D and 3D computer graphics.
  • See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/directx
  • https://github.com/Microsoft/DirectX-Graphics-Samples
• Metal (Apple Inc.) - Apple-only, MacOSX and iOS-only computer graphics API.
  • Official Web Site: https://developer.apple.com/metal/

General

• Vanilla processors Intel-x86 (IA32) 32 bits or Intel (IA64) or AMD x86-x64 64 bits processors.
  • Most well-known processor architecture, used in the IBM-PC computer architecture (servers, desktops and laptops) that became popular due to the widespread cloning and reverse engineering of the IBM-PC architecture by many manufacturers and also due to the licensing of Microsft MSDOS and later Windows-NT to those manufacturers.
• Embedded Processors
  • Processors designed for embedded applications, low power or battery-powered embedded systems. Most common: ARM-base processors, MIPS-based processors and PowerPC.
• Microncontrollers
  • SOC - System-on-Chip - Almost a whole-computer on a chip, a micronctroller has a CPU, general purpose digital IO, ADC - analog to digital converters, ROM (Read-Only Memory) EPROM and limited RAM memory. MCUs are used in embedded systems and on every day appliances such as keyboards, mouses, cars, toys, … Most well-known: Atmel AVR Atmega (Arduino).
• GPU - Graphical Processing Units
• DSP => Digital Signal Processor

Processor Architectures

• Most used for personal computers (based on x86)
  • Intel x86 or IA32 (32 bits).
  • AMD/Intel x86-64 or IA64 (64 bits).
• Widely cores on Embedded Systems:
  • ARM Core (32 bits) - Widely used in Smartphones, PDAs, Tablets, Printers and so on. Note: ARM is not an specific processor, it is a CPU architechture designed by the Arm company and licensed to IC (Integrated Circuit Manufacturers) which embbeds the CPU in their devices. So, the ARM-based CPUs, embedded processors and microncontrollers are produced by many manufacturers which makes them highly available and cost effective.
    • Some ARM-based device manufacturers: Samsung, Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Phillips, Atmel, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics and many others.
  • MIPS (32 and 64 bits) - CPU designed by MIPS Techonologies that is licensed IC manufacturers in a similar manner to ARM core.
    • Some manufacturers: Sony, Toshiba, Boradcom, NXP and Semiconductors.
    • List of MIPS processors
  • Power PC (Former Motorola)

Computer Architectures

• IBM-PC Architecture
• Mainframes
• Game Consoles (Proprietary computer architectures)
• PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers) - Proprietary Computer Architecture with a human-friendly interface used for industrial automation.

Graphical Stack - Outline of the most common graphical interface systems.

• X Windows System - X11 - XServer/Xlib Unix (Linux, BSD, FreeBSD)
• Windows API / Microsoft Windows OS
• MacOSX - Cocoa

Main C/C++ GUI - Graphical User Interfaces Libraries and APIs

• QT toolkit / C++ - Cross Platform. QT is the most supported cross platform toolkit, but it is hard to be called from languages other than C++ as it is written in C++ and this language doesn't have a standard ABI (Application Binary Interface).
• GTK / C with C++ inteface - Cross platform, most common in Linux OS.
• Windows API. / Only available on Windows.
• Cocoa / MacOSX - Not cross platform. It is only available on MacOSX.
• X-Windows Systems (XServer/X11 + XLib) - Most low level graphical user interface library on Linux, BSD and others. Note: In Linux and BSD, the graphical user interface is not part of the Kernel.

Native Executable Binary Formats

• Windows / .exe, *.dll files (PE - Portable Executable)
• Linux / No extension, *.so files (ELF - Executable and Linkable Format)
• MacOSX / *.dylib (Mach-O - Match Object )

Some Firmwares (EEPROMs, Microcontrollers) Binary Formats

• SREC
• Intel HEX
• SquashFS

Tooling

• Compilers
  • GCC - Gnu C/C++ Compiler (g++) (Stard Compiler of many Linux distributions)
  • Mingw - GCC compiler (g++) ported to Windows operating system.
  • Microsoft Visual C++ - C/C++ compiler - MSVC, aka VC++ (cl.exe)
  • LLVM/Clang (Clang++)
  • Intel C++ Compiler
  • PGI Compiler (Portland Group)
  • Proprietary compilers for embedded Devices:
    • Many embedded devices such as microcontrollers, embedded processors and DSPs have proprietary compilers provided by device manufactures. Example: MPLAB
    • IAR Embedded Workbench (Compilers + IDE) (IAR Systems) => Targets: ARM Cortex, 8051 MCU, Texas Instruments MSP430
• Building Tools
  • Cmake
  • MSBuild
  • Ninja
  • Make
    • NMake => Windows implementation
    • GNU Make (GMake) => GNU/Linux implementation of Make
    • BSD Make => BSD Implementation of Make