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Chapter 6: Understanding and Assessing your Hardware

Chapter 6: Understanding and Assessing your Hardware. Is now a good time to buy a new computer ? There never seems to be a good time to buy; the prices keep going down and the tech keeps becoming more advanced.

kennan-summers
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Chapter 6: Understanding and Assessing your Hardware

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  1. Chapter 6: Understanding and Assessing your Hardware

  2. Is now a good time to buy a new computer? • There never seems to be a good time to buy; the prices keep going down and the tech keeps becoming more advanced.

  3. Moore’s Law describes the pace at which CPUs (Central Processing Units) improve. Named after Gordon Moore the cofounder of Intel, this rule predicts that the number of transistors inside a CPU will increase so fast that CPU capacity will double every 18 months.

  4. For perspective if you put 10 cents in that kind of savings account in 1965, you would have a balance of more than $100 million today. Moore also predicts that around the year 2020 CPU chips will be manufactured in a different way, thus changing or eliminating the effects of Moore’s Law.

  5. Evaluating your CPU : There are several types of processors on the market: Intel processors include the core i7, i5, i3, and the Centrino line. • AMD processors offer the Athlon and Phenom processors. The MS Xbox uses a custom PowerPC-based CPU with an AMD Xenon processor to perform 115 billion calculations per second.

  6. How does a CPU work? • The CPU is comprised of two units: the control unit and the arithmetic logic unit (ALU). • The control unit coordinates the activities of all the other computer components • The ALU is responsible for performing all the arithmetic calculations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The ALU also makes login and comparison decisions such as determining if one unit is greater than or less than another.

  7. Every time the CPU performs a program instruction, it goes through the same series of steps. • It fetches the required piece of data from RAM • It decodes the instruction into something the Computer can understand • It executes the instruction This process is called a machine cycle

  8. What makes one CPU different from another? • The number of cores is one distinction. A core is a complete processing section from a CPU embedded into on physical chip. Another distinction is how quickly the processor can work or its clock speed. The last distinction is the amount of immediate access memory the CPU has called its cache memory.

  9. How will multiple cores help? • The quick answer is that having multiple cores allows the CPU to process more than one instruction at a time. This began quite a while ago as Hyperthreading, a sped up process of computing where the processor actually enables a new set of instructions to start executing before the previous has finished (this is still a sharing of resources of a single chip which is different from having separate cores).

  10. The most recent innovations in this area includes hyperthreading techniques with multiple cores. One of the benefits of these CPUs is that programs that always run in the background are now allocated a whole core so they do not cause lag in the running of other programs.

  11. The Intel i7-980x has six cores, each one using hyperthreading, so it simulates having 12 processors!

  12. How do I pick the fastest processor? • Clock speed is important along with the amount of cache memory, and the speed of the front side bus (FSB).

  13. Cache memory is a form of RAM that is more accessible to the CPU than regular RAM. There are several levels of cache memory. These levels are defined by a chip’s proximity to the CPU. • Level 1 cache is a block of memory that is built onto the CPU chip for the storage of data or commands that have just been used. • Level 2 cache is located on the CPU chip but is slightly farther away from the CPU, or it’s on a separate chip next to the CPU. • Level 3 cache is farther away but bigger in size.

  14. Front Side Bus (FSB) connects the processor to the system memory. Think of the FSB as the highway on which data travels between the CPU and RAM. Consequently, the faster the FSB is, the faster you can get data to your processor—speeding up the whole process. FSB is measured in MHz.

  15. Modern processors are defined by the combination of processor speed, FSB and the amount of cache.

  16. What does my computer currently have? • Go to system properties to see. You may have to check with the manufacturer about the FSB and the amount of cache.

  17. CPU usage • To view your current PCs usage you can open task manager (ctrl-alt-del) and then select the usage tab. You will see a line graph of usage over the past several seconds. A good indicator that it may be time for a new computer is that the usage stays over 90% for extended periods of time.

  18. Evaluating RAM • Random Access Memory (RAM) is your computer’s temporary storage space. RAM is an example of volatile storagemeaning the data stored in RAM will get cleared out when the PC is turned off. (ROM or Read Only Memory is an example of nonvolatile memory because it is permanent).

  19. Why not just use the hard drive for storage? • It is true that the storage space per dollar makes the hard drive a cheaper alternative, but not a logical one. It is about one million times faster for the CPU to retrieve a piece of data from RAM than from the hard drive. The time RAM uses is measured in nanoseconds (billionths of a second). But the time for hard drives is measured in milliseconds (thousandths of a second). It takes the Hard drive about 10 milliseconds to retrieve a piece of data.

  20. Are there different types of RAM? • Yes. Currently most systems use a form of double data rate 2 (DDR2). Double Data Rate 3 (DDR3) has an even faster transfer rate is seen in high performance systems. • Older versions of RAM include: Dynamic RAM (DRAM), static RAM (SRAM) and synchronous DRAM (SDRAM). • RAM comes in the form of a memory module (or chip). Most memory modules today are in the form of dual inline memory modules (DIMMS). • The amount of RAM that is actually sitting on memory modules in your computer is your computer’s physical memory.

  21. Windows 7 uses a memory-management technique known as SuperFetch. SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads them into your system memory so that they’ll be ready to go. • Kernel memory is the memory that your operating system uses.

  22. Every computer has a maximum limit on the amount of RAM that it can support. The mother board has a specific number of slots into which the memory card fit, and each lot has a limit on how much RAM it can hold. To determine your system’s limits you can consult your owner’s manual or go to certain commercial websites that can determine your systems’ RAM and it’s limits

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