9/8 Reading Notes

"Personal Computer Hardware" notes

Motherboard
Components attached to motherboard
CPU-the "brain" of the computer, allows computers to function, performs calculations.
Chipset-acts as a facilitator-"mediates" communication between CPU and other system compents, including main memory.
RAM-stores applications and running OS.
BIOS-Basic Input Output System handles boot firmware, tasks are handled by operating system drivers.

About boot firmware. About operating system drivers.

Internal Buses-connect CPU to some internal components and expansion cards for graphics and sound.
Current Internal Buses include:
The northbridge memory controller, for RAM and PCI Express.
PCI Express - expansion for graphics and physics processors and high-end network interfaces

External Bus Controllers-supoprt ports for external peripherals. Ports may be controlled directly by the southbridge I/O controller or based on expansion cards attached to the motherboard through the PCI bus.

Power Supply
Includes powercord, switch, cooling fan. Supplies power to motherboard and internal disk drives.

Video display controller
Produces output for computer montior. Either built into motherboard or attached in its own separate slot as a graphics card.

Removable data devices
CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, Floppy disk (mainly used now for loading RAID drivers), USB, tape drive.

Internal Storage
Hard disk-medium term storage
Solid-state drive-no moving parts, stores data in a digital format.
RAID array controller-device that manages several internal or external hard disk in order to achieve performance or reliability improvement in a RAID array.

Sound card- allows audio.

Other peripherals include: text input devics, pointing devices, gaming devices, impage and video input devices, audio input devices.

"Moores Law" notes
Focuses on semi-conductor units and the amount of memory they are able to store, the rate of increase in the amount that they are able to store. Density of components.

Other laws include: transistors per intergrated circuit, densisity at miminum cost per transistor.
Moore's law is more like a business model that an actual "hard science" law. It monitors the the increase of transistor count in the chips. Says it occurs at a fixed rate.

The Great Moore's Law Compensator (TGMLC)-also refered to as bloat describes computer softwar aquiring enough bloat to offset performance gains (more semi-conductor chips might slow performance rather than enhance it). The video summarizes this.