COMPUTER HARDWARE ENGINEER

NATURE OF THE OCCUPATION



Plan the system concept and the hardware needs for a particular computer product by analyzing the market needs and prepare a forecast which defines specifications, the technology to be used and the method, a sales plan and an initial financial product plan


Design the hardware architecture of the computer equipment being mindful of cost and technological considerations


Prepare detailed specifications and methods to interface computer products -the interaction between CPU and peripheral units (hardware) and between the operating system and user programs (software)


Fabricate and test a theoretical model of the computer product often using computer simulation, which provides the necessary programming instructions for its manufacture

Build working prototypes of the computer equipment


PARALLEL PROCESSING is a computer architecture in which several processors work on different parts of a task simultaneously. This type of array is used where processing speed is more important than cost. Parallel processing applications include weather forecasting, geology, plasma and nuclear physics.

NEURAL NETWORKS are artificial neural nets (ANN) which involve the development of digital, analog and hybrid systems that mimic the behavior of the biological brain. It is a parallel processing computer system capable of learning and which can train and program itself to perform a task. It is used in applications such as robotics, medical diagnosis, image processing and pattern recognition.

FUZZY LOGIC is a mathematical technique for dealing with imprecise data and problems that have many solutions rather than one. Fuzzy logic recognizes "maybe" or "perhaps" rather than conventional logic which only recognizes "yes" or "no". Using hardware architecture such as analog circuits and parallel processing, fuzzy logic can be used for applications in medical systems for signal and image processing, in manufacturing systems for the sequential movements of multi-jointed robot arms or in economics for estimating interest and currency exchange rates.