Genre Analysis

Abstract
In this genre analysis I am going to start first with a definition of genre inspired by Amy J. Devitt a Ph.D professor from the University of Kansas. Genres are generated in and dependent upon the activity of people in groups; genres are ideological as well as situational, and function in multiple ways. A genre may sometimes be recognizable only by members of the group in which the genre developed; genres interact with each other. A gender reflects, constructs, and reinforces the values, epistemology, and power relationships of the group from which it developed and for which it functions (Devitt, 1993). With that definition of genre I will be analyzing three articles in the discourse community of computer engineering.

Introduction
These articles that I am going to be analyzing come from a journal called Computers & Electrical Engineering which has been around since 1973. This journal focuses on Applications of high-performance computing, novel computing systems, Signal processing architectures, algorithms, green technologies in information, computing, and communication systems among others. The first article is about a dedicated FPGA for the secure hash algorithm SHA-256. The second article is about Graphics Processing Units and Open Computing Language for parallel computing. The third article is about quantum computing and communications and what are some of the challenges involved with that. These articles are meant to be highly technical, therefore not everyone could read this article and understand it. Usually these articles are written by university professors from the department of computer engineering, for instance the second article comes from California State University and was written by three professors in the area of computer engineering and computer science (Perelygin, Lam, & Wu, January 2014). This shows that the level of literacy in the area of computer engineering and computer science is a must if someone wants to be able to understand these articles.

Structure
All three articles have a very similar structure and organization that makes it easier for readers that are familiar with this organization. All three articles start off with the Abstract, in which the author(s) present a brief introduction to their topic. For example: Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have become increasingly powerful over the last decade. Programs taking advantage of this architecture can achieve large performance gains (Perelygin, Lam, & Wu, January 2014). Which is very similar to Computer engineers are continuously seeking new solutions to increase available process-ing speed, achievable transmission rates, and efficiency in order to satisfy users expecta-tions. (Imre, January 2014). After the Abstract section two of the articles go into the Introduction (first and third article) section and one article goes to the Background (second article) section. I noticed that the Introduction and Background sections serve the same purpose, which is to give a little background history to the reader in the research field of the article. Here is an example of how all three articles have a very similar Introduction/Background section: Traditionally, cryptographic algorithms have been considered slow, demanding high computational resources and ineffi-ciently implemented in conventional general purpose processors (Garca, Algredo-Badillo, Morales-Sandoval, Feregrino-Uribe, & Cumplido, January 2014). The well-known trend known as Moores law was first reported in 1965 (Imre, January 2014). Until the year 2004, personal computer performance was improved by scaling the frequency of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) (Perelygin, Lam, & Wu, January 2014). After the Introduction\Background section the articles move into their on specific sections. In those sections the three articles do a good job at explaining their purpose with examples and graphs. Below is an example of some of the graphs that the articles use to illustrate the idea they are trying to explain:

Quantum bit as a superposition of the two classical logical bit values.

Block diagram of the SHA-256 processor.

The shader model 5.0 pipeline.

The article about GPUs and the article about SHA-256 seem to use block diagrams more to illustrate their purpose than the article about quantum computing.

Goals
All three articles have one goal, and that is to inform the reader about their topic. At some point in time people were finding out what other people found already which wastes a lot of time. Because of this, people started to write articles and publish them so that everyone in this community would read it; this is a result of repeated rhetorical situations within the computer engineering and computer science community.

Works Cited
Devitt, A. J. (1993). Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept. NCTE, 44(4), 573586. Garca, R., Algredo-Badillo, I., Morales-Sandoval, M., Feregrino-Uribe, C., & Cumplido, R. (January 2014). A compact FPGA-based processor for the Secure Hash Algorithm SHA-256. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 40(1), 194202. Imre, S. (January 2014). Quantum computing and communications Introduction and challenges. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 40(1), 134141. Perelygin, K., Lam, S., & Wu, X. (January 2014). Graphics Processing Units and Open Computing Language for parallel computing. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 40(1), 241251.