A microchip, commonly called the integrated circuit, is a tiny electronic circuit. It is made up primarily of semiconductor devices. For the most part, these small microchips are used in nearly every type of electronic device known to man. As the years have gone on from their creation in the late 50s and early 60s, …
In order to understand what a checksum error is, it is important to first learn what a checksum is. A checksum is a redundancy check during a computer’s start up process, which makes sure that the computer’s data is intact and unhampered. The data is scanned and tested for accuracy, either based on how well …
CPU is an acronym that stands for central processing unit. The central processing unit is responsible for performing all of the mathematical calculations that are required for a computer to function properly. Because a computer cannot function without the CPU (which may also be referred to as the central processor or just the processor), it …
CPUs process data using instructions stored in the computer memory or RAM. The RAM is a temporary storage area that makes information and instructions available to the microprocessor, which does not have to use this information until required. The two processor classifications are the Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) and the Complex Instruction Set Computer …
The Front Side Bus (FSB) is the connecting path between the CPU and other key components such as system memory. The Front Side Bus is also called the Data Bus and the Processor Side Bus (PSB). Front Side Bus Widths of Various CPUs CPU Front Side Bus Width 8088 8 8086 16 80286 16 80386SX …
The Pentium family of processors is the current generation of CPU's for personal computers from Intel. Pentium processors trace their heritage all the way back to the original Intel 8088 CPU used in the original IBM-PC in 1981. Intel renamed the 80586 processor Pentium because of the difficulties of trademarking numbers. This was a move …
Flops are a special acronym that describes a unit of measurement known as "FLoating point Operations Per Second". This measurement is extremely important in determining the amount of operations which could be handled by computer technologies. In today's computing, gigaflops of data can be handled by different hardware options. A gigaflop is a measurement in terms of one …
Athlon is a name for AMD’s main line of Intel-compatible CPUs. The Athlon line is designed to complete against the Intel Pentium CPUs. Athlon CPUs feature a L1 cache with 64KB of memory for data and another 64KB of memory for instructions. Athlon CPUs support MMX, 3DNow!, and SSE. Some models of Athlon CPUs also …
Multi-core technology is the term that describes today's processors that have two or more working processor chips (more commonly referred to as cores) working simultaneously as one system. Dual cores or chips with two processors that work as one system are the first type of multi-core technology applications. How It Works The multi-core processor technology …
A computer processor is commonly referred to as the CPU, or central processing unit of a computer. The processor is the primary component of a computer designed to move and process data. Computer processors are commonly referred to by the speed that the CPU can process computer instructions per second measured in hertz and are …