Vox's Glossary
Vox's Glossary
Confused about an acronym or term? Maybe we have it here! If not, google it, wiki almost certainly has an article explaining it! And if neither wiki nor google can help, you are of course free to ask!
APU :
Accelerated Processing Unit
ATX :
Advanced Technology Extended
BIOS :
Basic Input/Output System
CPU :
Central Processing Unit / Processor
GPU :
Graphics Processing Unit
GPGPU :
General Processing Graphics Processing Unit
HD :
Hard Drive
HDD :
Hard Disk Drive
HS :
Heat Sink
MB or MoBo :
Motherboard
PSU :
Power Supply Unit
SSD :
Solid State Drive
ODD :
Optical Disk Drive
RAM :
Random Access Memory
ROM :
Read Only Memory
R/W or RW : Read / Write
PPGB : Price Per GigaByte
B/KB/MB... :
Byte (B), KiloByte (KB), MegaByte (MB), GigaByte (GB), TeraByte (TB), PetaByte (PB),
Bit (b), KiloBit (Kb), MegaBit (Mb), GigaBit (Gb), TeraBit (Tb), PetaBit (Pb)
IGP :
Integrated Graphics Processor
PCI :
Peripheral Component Interconnect
PCI-E :
Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
Processor: The 'brains' of a computer, does the major work of directing and utilising memory, sending commands to other components, and performing logical-mathematical computations. (See: APU, CPU)
Graphics Processing Unit: Interfaces high resolution displays and provides direct pipelines to rendering 2D and 3D images. Mostly used for real time 3D rendering such as video games and desktop effects such as windows Aero. (See: GPU / GPGPU / General Processing GPUs)
Main Memory / RAM: Stores the running data for all software and any running programs to be run or accessed through the data bus via the CPU.
Mother Board: The 'main board' connects all the hardware together and has the physical buses for data transfer etc.
Hard Drive: Stores data for the long term, typically very large volumes of data that can be media, programmes, operating systems or anything the computer needs to remember for the next time it's turned on.
Hard Disk Drive: Stores information on glass or metallic spinning platers with magnetic metal physical bits, where the direction of magnetism controls the value of the bit. The platters are written to and read from via a R/W head that hovers over the plater on a motorised arm due to the wind created from the platter spinning. Typically HDD's use multiple platters and heads with sizes from 80GB to 3TB being common. Typical PPGB: £0.039 (GBP) / $0.053 (USD)
Solid State Drive: Stores information in NAND Flash non-volatile latches, very fast however rather expensive in comparison to traditional HDD's. No mechanical parts mean SSD's are also less likely to break than HDD's from sharp movements or impacts, and generate less heat. Lastly since they don't have to move a mechanical arm into place then wait for the platter to spin in order to read a bit, they have lower read/write latencies. Some SSD's have a trait command; TRIM, which improves long term performance. Typical PPGB: £1.375 (GPB) / $1.666 (USD)
Power Supply Unit: Supplies power to a computer by converting mains AC into several various voltages on multiple rials of DC. Good PSU's match up to the 80 Plus standard, however cost significantly more than non 80Plus. In the case of mobile computers it splits the power from the on board battery into several voltages and charges the battery from mains, however is typically integrated into the battery and motherboard making it a part only in concept.
Secondary Graphics Card: Some computers have two graphics cards, typically they work with only some games and try to improve performance, some end up dedicated to physics while the other card handles graphics. Some graphics cards have multiple (normally 2) GPU's in the same box, but are simply two cards off one PCI-E slot.
Integrated Graphics Processor: Mostly used in thin-clients and mobile computers, integrated graphics chips embedded in the motherboard or CPU are low power and low performance GPU's designed to accelerate media and low performance cost games.
Sound Card: Used to improve audio quality and provide different audio connections to interface sound systems to the computer.
Optical Disk Drive: Used to write to and/or read from disks, typically CD's, DVD's and Blu Ray disks. The disks are all interfaced using variously adjusted lasers, while spinning at high velocity, albeit not as fast as a HDD platter.
PCI Extension Cards: Motherboards have generalised expansion slots called PCI slots that are used to provide more interfaces or features on the computer. PCI-Slots come in many versions, (typically PCI, PCI-E, PCI-E 2.0 and soon PCI-E 3.0) and configurations (such as x4, x8, x16 (referring to the number of data lines)).
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Contributions regarding common issues and questions are always welcome.
