1.4 Standards Organizations
Suppose you decide that you'd like to have one of those nifty new .28mm dot pitch AG monitors. You figure that you can shop around a bit to find the best price. You make a few phone calls, surf the Web, and drive around town until you find the one that gives you the most for your money. From your experience, you know that you can buy your monitor anywhere and it will probably work fine on your system. You can make this assumption because computer equipment manufacturers have agreed to comply with connectivity and operational specifications established by a number of government and industry organizations.
Some of these standards-setting organizations are ad-hoc trade associations or consortia made up of industry leaders. Manufacturers know that by establishing common guidelines for a particular type of equipment, they can market their products to a wider audience than if they came up with separate-and perhaps incompatible-specifications.
Some standards organizations have formal charters and are recognized internationally as the definitive authority in certain areas of electronics and computers. As you continue your studies in computer organization and architecture, you will encounter specifications formulated by these groups, so you should know something about them.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of the professions of electronic and computer engineering. The IEEE actively promotes the interests of the worldwide engineering community by publishing an array of technical literature. The IEEE also sets standards for various computer components, signaling protocols, and data representation, to name only a few areas of its involvement. The IEEE has a democratic, albeit convoluted, procedure established for the creation of new standards. Its final documents are well respected and usually endure for several years before requiring revision.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is based in Geneva, Switzerland. The ITU was formerly known as the Comité Consultatif International Télégraphique et Téléphonique, or the International Consultative Committee on Telephony and Telegraphy. As its name implies, the ITU concerns itself with the interoperability of telecommunications systems, including telephone, telegraph, and data communication systems. The telecommunications arm of the ITU, the ITU-T, has established a number of standards that you will encounter in the literature. You will see these standards prefixed by ITU-T or the group's former initials, CCITT.
Many countries, including the European Community, have commissioned umbrella organizations to represent their interests within various international groups. The group representing the United States is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Great Britain has its British Standards Institution (BSI) in addition to having a voice on CEN (Comite Europeen de Normalisation), the European committee for standardization.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is the entity that coordinates worldwide standards development, including the activities of ANSI with BSI among others. ISO is not an acronym, but derives from the Greek word, isos, meaning "equal." The ISO consists of over 2,800 technical committees, each of which is charged with some global standardization issue. Its interests range from the behavior of photographic film to the pitch of screw threads to the complex world of computer engineering. The proliferation of global trade has been facilitated by the ISO. Today, the ISO touches virtually every aspect of our lives.
Throughout this book, we mention official standards designations where appropriate. Definitive information concerning many of these standards can be found in excruciating detail on the Web site of the organization responsible for establishing the standard cited. As an added bonus, many standards contain "normative" and informative references, which provide background information in areas related to the standard.
