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

facturers 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

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.

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

your system. You can make this assumption because computer equipment manu